Constructing Curiousily: How Civil Engineering Helped Me Research Anything

Abstract:  

We are often told that academic success means picking one narrow lane and staying in it forever. But what if a civil engineering background is actually a superpower that lets you drive in every lane? In this talk, I will explore the concept of the “”research omnivore”” and look at how the foundational skills of civil engineering—such as systems thinking, structural logic, spatial orientation, optimization, and pragmatism—gave me a solid foundation to tackle almost any problem, anywhere.

To exemplify this, I will traverse across a diverse buffet of research topics that, on the surface, don’t look like traditional civil engineering at all. I will share how my work applies traffic and transportation principles to drone routing for logistics whereas spatial aspects are woven into designing a rehabilitation hospital floorplan or a theme park layout. I’ll show how designing resilient physical infrastructure translates directly into building reliable telecommunications networks, and how standard structural optimization scales to airfoil design. Whether you are a graduate student figuring out your next steps or a faculty member looking for unexpected collaborations, this seminar will provide directions on how to leverage your civil engineering foundation to follow your curiosity wherever it leads.

Bio:

Alice E. Smith is Endowed Shelby Distinguished Professor of the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Alabama. Dr. Smith’s research focus is analysis, modeling, and optimization of complex systems with emphasis on intelligent computation inspired by natural systems integrated with traditional operations research and statistical approaches. She holds one U.S. patent and several international patents and has authored publications which have garnered over 19,000 citations and an H Index of 54. Dr. Smith has been a principal investigator on over $12 million of sponsored research with funding by DHS, NASA, U.S. DoD, MDA, NSA, NIST, U.S. DoT, Frontier Technologies Inc., Lockheed Martin, Bombardier Transportation, the Ben Franklin Technology Center of Western Pennsylvania, and U.S. National Science Foundation, from which she has been awarded 19 distinct grants. She is a four-time Fulbright Scholar (2013, 2016, 2017, 2020). Dr. Smith is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), a Fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science