News and Updates

We’re super excited to announce that the CIRCLE lab, in partnership with the ARVIN lab, received an NSF award to combine life cycle assessment (LCA), machine learning, and generative AI to enable design for circular economy in early design stages! See the project abstract below. Buildings account for a significant portion of global material use…

Nondestructive evaluation meets material reuse!Today we had the first session of our RECLAIM project at Drexel University College of Engineering – Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering at Drexel University. RECLAIM stands for Robotic Evaluation for Circular Lifecycle Assessment of Infrastructure Materials. In this project, born from a collaboration between myself and Arvin Ebrahimkhanlou, PhD, PE,…

First time at an AEESP conference and I loved it!Highlights:— I cannot get over how beautiful Duke’s campus is;— The sense of community, support, and solidarity was overwhelming;— The leadership talks were inspiring and got me teary-eyed. Our work matters! And our colleagues inspire us.— There was an excellent session on Climate education for engineering!—…

Happy to share that Amanda Carneiro Marques, Ph.D. and I were awarded a Longsview Fellowship for our research project in circular water strategies, flood mitigation, and climate resilience!Thankful to Drexel University College of Engineering for the support to get this exciting project started. We needed this bump of confidence lately!And of course especially thankful to…

A new paper on circular economy policies in the construction sector is out — glad to have been a part of it! This study looks at how Italy, Germany, the U.S., and Japan integrate circular principles into their policy frameworks—especially in construction and the built environment.Shoutout to Giulia Marzani for leading this work! The paper…

Another one fresh off the press: I’m excited to share that I was recently featured in a Drexel University News Blog article discussing how digital technologies like AI and blockchain can reduce waste in the construction industry. The piece explores the potential of these innovations to promote sustainability and efficiency in our field. Shoutout to…

Happy to announce that the Drexel University College of Engineering ‘s CIRCLE lab received a PA Manufacturing Innovation award from the PA DCED Department! The award will fund a partnership with industry to improve the circularity of prefabricated façade systems.Congratulations to my colleagues at COE who also received the award: Arvin Ebrahimkhanlou, PhD, PE ,…

Today Cagla Keles represented our Department of Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering at Drexel University and presented her CIRCLE lab research at the #AEI2025 conference. I couldn’t be prouder of her! She absolutely killed it. Cagla talked about her post-demolition materials flow analysis in Philadelphia — the first study of its kind in the U.S.…

I’m excited to announce that our CIRCLE lab at Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering at Drexel University was just awarded an ASEE grant to infuse sustainability in engineering education! The grant is based on the Engineering for One Planet framework (see figure below), and it will help us lead an initiative to create a sustainability…

First time advising Senior Design, and I couldn’t be prouder! My students delivered sharp, visually compelling presentations backed by thoughtful design decisions. Congratulations to all CAEE seniors at Drexel—and a special shoutout to my teams and co-advisors Matthew Reichenbach and L. James Lo!