News
2022
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February 2022: Dr. Abdelaziz receives the 2022 Hogentogler award from ASTM [Link]
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January 2022: Dr. Abdelaziz's work highlighted by VT news [Link]
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2020
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January 2020: Our research group moved to Virginia Tech! Let's go, Hokies!
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2019
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August 2019: Mr. Karam Jaradat defended his Ph.D. dissertation. Congratulations, Dr. Jaradat!
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March 2019: Prof. Sherif Abdelaziz presented our paper entitled "Filler-stabilized Xanthan gum for soil improvement" in Geo-Congress 2019.
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March 2019: Mr. Karam Jaradat presented our paper entitled "Thermomechanical behavior of saturated clays using discrete element modelling" in Geo-Congress 2019.
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March 2019: Our group attended Geo-Congress 2019 in Philadelphia, PA.
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2018
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September 2018: Dr. Abdelaziz is to lead a multidisciplinary research team, including ERDC of the U.S.Army Corps of Engineers, to develop a new technique to stabilize soils using microbially-induced biopolymers through a 2018 NIPP Security and Resilience Challenge Award from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
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September 2018: Mr. Seyed M. Zeinali has joined our group for his Ph.D. degree. Welcome, Seyed!
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August 2018: Mr. Karam Jaradat successfully defended his Ph.D. proposal. Congratulations!
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May 2018: Mr. Justin Antonette has started an internship in Skanska underpinning and foundation.
April 2018: Dr. Abdelaziz interviewed by TBR NewsMedia (Link).
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March 2018: Mr. Karam Jaradat presented his paper entitled "Temperature-Dependent Load-Displacement Curves of Heat Exchanger Piles in Sand" in IFCEE 2018.
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March 2018: Our research group attended IFCEE 2018 in Orlando, FL.
2017
December 2017: Mr Karam Jaradat & Mr Zubin Darbari completed their M.Sc. Congratulation both of you!
November 2017: Dr. Abdelaziz was awarded the prestigious Young Investigator Program (YIP) award from the US Army Research Office (ARO) to investigate temperature effects on the microstructure of saturated soils and its relation to the large-scale behavior (Link).
October 2017: Dr. Abdelaziz is co-/organizing two mini-symposiums at the International Symposium on Energy Geotechnics SEG-2018. Check the Energy Geotechnics Across Scales mini-symposium (here) and the Thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical behavior of earth materials (here). To submit abstracts to these mini-symposiums, use this link and indicate the mini-symposium of interest in your submission.
September 2017: Karam Jaradat and Zubin Darbari got a new paper published in the Applied Clay Sciences investigating the effect of various temperatures on the orientation of clay particles using synchrotron experiments. Check it out [Link]. Congratulations, Karam and Zubin!
August 2017: Justin Antonette joined our research team! Welcome, Justin.
June 2017: New instruments are added to our research lab! We acquired a Mercury Intrusion Porosimetry (MIP) and a gas adsorption instruments through the DURIP award. Thanks to the ARO for supporting our lab.
April 2017: Mr. Karam Jaradat was selected for the 2017 NSLS-II & CFN Users' meeting student scholarship award for his research on understanding the thermo-mechanical behavior of clays from the microscale to the macroscale over a range of freezing and elevated temperatures. Congratulations, Karam!
March 2017: Our group was awarded a nationwide competitive DURIP project for 2017 to acquire several state-of-the-art multiscale testing equipment (link).
January 15: Mr. Michael Zakoworotny, one of the high school students who worked with our group last summer, was selected as a Regeneron Scholar (Link). Congratulations, Michael!
2016
December 13: Dr. Abdelaziz delivered an invited seminar at Columbia University.
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November 21: Our research is granted access to the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS-II) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) to study temperature effects on clay microstructure.
October 1: Mr. Zubin Darbari from Material Sciences and Engineering Department joined our research group. Welcome, Zubin!
September 1: Our research group was granted an extension for accessing the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL).
August 13: Mr. Soji Abarham presented his master degree work, performed under Dr. Abdelaziz supervision, at GeoChicago.
August 10: Mr. Soji Abarham successfully defended his master degree focusing on "Self-heated pavements." Congratulations, Soji!
July 12: A new paper for Dr. Abdelaziz is published online by the Applied Thermal Engineering Journal. The article title is "Selection of the design temperature change for energy piles." [Link]
June 19-24: Dr. Abdelaziz attended ASCE ExCEEd Teaching Workshop at Florida Gulf Coast University.
June 1: Army Research Office (ARO) funded our project titled "Multi-scale assessment of the thermo-mechanical behavior of saturated clays subjected to freeze-heat cycles."
May 20: Johny Donza joined our laboratory as an undergraduate researcher. Welcome, Johny!
May 1: Our research group was granted access to the research facility at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL).
March 21: Dr. Abdelaziz is selected as ASCE ExCEEd 2016 Teaching Fellow.
March 14-18: Dr. Abdelaziz attended the Scanning Electron Microscopy advanced workshop at the Hooke College of Applied Sciences.
Feb. 18: A new paper for Dr. Abdelaziz is published online by the Environmental Geotechnics Journal. The title of the article is "Non-uniform thermal strains and stresses in energy piles." [Link]
January 2016: Karam Jaradat joined our research group for his Ph.D. degree. Welcome, Karam!
2015
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April 2: A new paper for Dr. Abdelaziz is published online by the Geothermics Journal. The article title is "Counterbalancing ambient interference on thermal conductivity tests for energy piles." [Link]
April 1: University Transportation Research Center for Region 2 selected the "Self-Heated Pavements" project for funding.
March 30: Dr. Abdelaziz is organizing an Energy Geo-Structure session for the ASCE 2016 Geotechnical and Structural Engineering Congress.