New environmental engineering club hosts students from a top chinese university

By Peter Murphy

The students were form the Hydraulic Engineering program at Tsinghua. This program is part of the university’s School of Civil Engineering, the sixth ranked program in the world, according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU).

Their stop at UB gave them a chance to share information about Tsinghua’s Hydraulic Engineering program, and learn about some of the research graduate students are conducting in Buffalo.

“Our MS and PhD students presented some of their research, and were able to illustrate some of what goes on in our department,” says Zhenduo Zhu, an environmental engineering assistant professor, “they discussed issues at the heart of what the Tsinghua student were here to understand: urban stormwater infrastructure. Our student Kristina Macro spent time discuss her research that does just that with the City of Buffalo.”

Macro, Maria Narine Torres, and PhD students Yuan Hui, Maliheh Karamigolbaghi and Jundong Qiao presented research to the visitors from Tsinghua. Hui and Karamigolbaghi also serve as president and vice president of UB’s EWRI chapter.

Students from Tsinghua traveled to universities throughout the U.S. to learn about the practices of urban stormwater management and watershed management in the country. Some of the concepts associated with urban stormwater management they examined while in the United States include low impact development and green infrastructure. In addition to UB, the students traveled to universities along the eastern United States to learn about these practices.

EWRI is a technical institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers.