Collegiate Times

Jesus M. de la Garza, Vecellio Professor of construction engineering and management, was recently appointed as a member of the Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment within the National Research Council.

According to the National Academies Web site, the National Research Council is devoted to improving government decision-making and public policy regarding areas of science, engineering, health, and technology that affect the people of the United States on a daily basis.

The Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment is a branch within the NRC that advises the government on how to fix problems dealing with the interrelationships between infrastructural parts of society, such as highways, water works, telecommunications, and energy and power grids. The Board holds workshops, writes reports, and makes recommendations on how to make the areas of infrastructure more efficient so they can better serve the members of any given community.

Potential members of the Board are nominated, assessed by the NRC board, and if selected, serve a two-year term in which they meet to discuss infrastructure issues, plan workshops, and write reports called "white papers" to hand over to Congress, the White House, and other upper-level government organizations for review.

Currently, de la Garza and his fellow board members are looking over issues of interdependencies of different infrastructure systems and assessing how they correlate and what the effects of one system failing would have on the others. They are studying past catastrophes, such as the black out that affected nearly all of the upper East coast in 2003, to see how the infrastructure systems reacted to one another in those events and to determine what could be changed in order to prevent similar catastrophes in the future.

In addition to his position on the Board on Infrastructure, de la Garza has also held the position of program director of the Information Technology and Infrastructure Systems in the Civil and Mechanical Systems Division of the National Science Foundation, and leads his own student-based research team, CHAMPS.

As the program director at NSF, de la Garza had the opportunity to evaluate research proposals from scientists around the country, determining which were worthy of receiving funding from the NSF.

"When I took the position of the program director, everyone said I went to the 'dark side,'"de la Garza said. "I got experience on both sides of research proposals, and now I can share my knowledge of what an exceptional proposal is with my colleagues."

With the Center for Highway Asset Management Programs, or CHAMPS, de la Garza and his team of students work closely with the Virginia Department of Transportation to discuss how to use performance-based contracts for maintenance of the highway systems. This involves looking at new innovations and designs that can keep highway systems working at a highly efficient level. The group is composed of one post-doctoral student, five graduate students, and six undergraduates who all work together as equals for the same research goals.

Through CHAMPS, de la Garza hopes to inspire students to go on in their education and to further their research skills, which will help them on their way to higher education. He also includes findings from CHAMPS and other research projects in his regular classroom curriculum in addition to using the textbook.

"I am a strong believer in integrating research into the curriculum and making it part of the classes I teach. By making the findings available in the classroom, my students are exposed to very current knowledge," de la Garza said.

Bill Knocke, department head of the civil and environmental engineering, applauded de la Garza on his position on the Board of Infrastructure and said he feels confident that de la Garza will bring his best knowledge and judgment to the Board.

"We're proud of his being selected, it's a real recognition of the work he's done," Knocke said. "This helps people to know and understand the quality and impact of the work going on in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department."