Lafayette Engineering

Civil & Environmental Engineering Professor and Department Head Mike McGuire traded the classroom for the trail, climbing Mount Lafayette with his family! The mountain is named to honor the Marquis de Lafayette, whose popularity increased after his tour revisiting New Hampshire and the other then-states in 1824-1825. 🥾

Standing 5,249 feet at the northern end of New Hampshire’s Franconia Range in the White Mountains, the McGuire’s hike made for an unforgettable family trek with some seriously rewarded views. 🌲🏔️

How are you spending your time outdoors this season? Drop your favorite hiking spots in the comments below! 👇

How are you spending your summer? 🌧️🌿

For civil engineering student Phoebe Haverstick, summer research with Prof. Kelleher means getting hands-on with environmental engineering, installing sensors in stormwater grates to better understand how rainwater impacts local streams.

💬 "I'm hanging sensors from stormwater grates and attaching others to the top of the grates to monitor the temperature of water as it flows into the stormwater system. By comparing water temperatures to air temperatures, I'm looking for spikes that occur during rainstorms.

Those temperature spikes happen because rainwater absorbs heat from blacktop surfaces as it flows across them. That warmer stormwater eventually reaches nearby streams, where it can harm aquatic wildlife. My research helps us better understand this process and could lead to solutions that protect our local ecosystems."

👏 Way to turn your classroom learning into research that helps protect our environment and the communities that depend on it, Phoebe!

Congratulations to Prof. Alex Brown, Sam Milhaven ’24 (IntE Robotics), and Wenjia Li ’25 (IntE Robotics), whose paper "Combined steer and rider lean control for a low-cost, small-scale self-balancing motorcycle" was published in the proceedings of the 2026 IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV), a highly selective international conference. The paper was selected for an oral presentation, an honor reserved for just the top 8% of accepted papers! Sam presented the paper in Detroit, MI, at the conference.✨👏

☀️ How are you spending your summer?

ECE student Fatima Tanveer spent hers teaching a robot to learn from its own mistakes. 🤖⚡️

"This summer I spent ten weeks at Lehigh's Control Systems Lab teaching a robot to learn from its own mistakes. The tricky part: the robot could not be told exactly what to do at every moment, and the conditions around it kept changing. So instead of programming every move, I trained it to build its own mental picture of how the world works, imagine what might happen if it tried different actions, and then pick whichever one it expected to work best. After 50 tries on the real hardware, it was getting things right about 90 percent of the time.

Presenting the poster at Lehigh's summer research symposium, where it won top honors in Advanced AI and Machine Learning, was the perfect ending.”

Earlier in the summer Fatima also climbed onto a rooftop for a solar panel installation bootcamp. “None of it happens without Lafayette Engineering."

Congratulations, Fatima! 🏆👏 Way to turn your classroom knowledge into real-world impact, push the boundaries of AI research, and make the most of your summer.

Congratulations to Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Kristen Sanford, who has been named the inaugural Assistant Director of the Hanson Center! ✨

Prof. Sanford brings a track record of leadership and impact to the new role. Her work focuses on sustainable, equitable infrastructure, with research aimed at improving how engineers are educated to plan and manage these systems.
Prof. Sanford is no stranger to leadership or impact:

🏅 ASCE Region 2 JEDI Award Recipient for outstanding work in Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
🧭 Former Chair of both the Engineering Studies Program and the Faculty Committee on Diversity
🚗 Longtime leader with the American Society for Engineering Education, and ASCE’s Educational Activities and Transportation & Development Institute

Her connection to the Hanson Center runs deep as well. She served on the 2017 academic planning group that helped shape its creation. In this new role, Prof. Sanford will spearhead the Center’s research initiatives and interdisciplinary projects.

Prof. Sanford exemplifies what thoughtful leadership in engineering looks like, rooted in facts, empathy, and constructive dialogue. We’re thrilled to see her help guide the Center's future and continue inspiring students to think bigger about the impact of their work.

Professor Kristen Sanford of Civil & Environmental Engineering recently attended the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) International Annual Meeting in Detroit.

As a member of the planning committee for the Transportation Educators’ Workshop, Prof. Sanford helped bring together educators and practitioners from around the world. She also facilitated a discussion on the future of transportation education.

Exciting progress for the field and the engineers of tomorrow!

While the air temperatures outside are rising, the Civil and Environmental Engineers are taking to the local streams! This past week, Professor Christa Kelleher (G'08) and Phoebe Haverstick ('28) spent a few days installing sensors to measure water temperature across the streams at Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center. These sensors will record water temperature every 10 minutes for the next few years, and aid Professor Kelleher and her team in unraveling how shading, streamflow, and groundwater interact with warm temperatures to influence water temperature behavior during drought. They're looking for the streams in the Lehigh Valley that stay cool even when air temperatures are increasing, to investigate what about those sites makes them special.

Congratulations to Roman Conca ’26 (Integrative Engineering) on receiving the prestigious USFulbright Austria Combined Open Study/Research & English Teaching Assistantship!

For Roman, the path to the Fulbright was paved right here at Lafayette:

📐 In the Classroom: The multidisciplinary nature of Integrative Engineering taught him how to collaborate across different backgrounds to tackle complex modern challenges.

👟 On the Track: As a track and field athlete, he mastered the art of camaraderie, navigating athletic setbacks, and building a shared vision.

👥 Across Campus: Through his roles in the LEO orientation program and the OAKs Leadership Academy, Roman honed his skills in leading diverse groups and mentoring individuals.

💬 "My experience in these organizations has sharpened my skills as a communicator and a role model to foster an environment where others feel comfortable and can speak freely without judgment," Roman says.

Roman is ready to embrace Vienna's culture, where he will assist and lead lessons focused on topics relating to American culture, society, politics, and more at a local school. He will also be conducting research about cultural and societal motivations for sustainable infrastructure at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences before returning to the U.S. to pursue a Master’s in environmental engineering.

We can't wait to see the impact you make in Austria, Roman! ✈️