AE program wins awards at AEI Conference; Ece Erdogmus chosen Outstanding AE Educator

The Nebraska architectural engineering program won five awards at the annual Architectural Engineering Institute (AEI) Conference April 3-6 near Washington, D.C., including Ece Erdogmus, professor of architectural engineering, being presented the AEI Outstanding AE Educator Award.

Erdogmus has several international collaborations in her research and has used them to provide educational and professional experiences for her students. Those include working on the reconstruction of an ancient Roman temple in southern Turkey and the Global Experiences in Architectural Engineering course in conjunction with the University’s Engineering Study Abroad in Italy program.

She joined the engineering faculty at UNL in August 2004 and has been consistently recognized for her teaching excellence, including earning the 2006 Henry Y. Kleinkauf Family Distinguished New Faculty Teaching Award, the 2007 Architectural Engineering Teaching Award and the 2018 Holling Family Master Teacher Award/University-wide Teaching Award.

In the student design competition, the Nebraska Master of Architectural Engineering (MAE) team won both of the innovation awards given to the team that had the best response to the special challenges – one in acoustics and on in wood/timber/engineered wood design. The team also took second place in the structural sub-discipline.

The AEI student design competition allows for only one team per university, and the Nebraska AE team was one of the four finalists selected from the seven universities that entered.

Members of the Nebraska team were Gabriel Larsen, Monica Houck, Shamsa Al-Salami, Sarah Drummey, Austin Seagren, Aisha Alhashmi, Jeffrey Thompson, Rahil Al Jabri, Luke Dolezal, and Brooke Scherer.

Also attending were Nebraska AESLAC students Jen Mack, Gage Gibney, Sam Underwood, Matt Huntwork, Ernie Rodriguez, Isabel Eberspacher, Ashley Everitt, and Emily Ritzdorf.

Brandon Rich, an AE alumnus, and his Alvine Engineering team won the best overall project over $100 million as part of the AEI professional design competition. Rich earned his bachelor’s degree (2006) and master’s degree (2007) from the Nebraska AE program.

Talal AlBalushi, the cultural attache from the embassy of Oman, met with representatives of the Nebraska AE program – Clarence Waters, the Aaron Douglas professor of architectural engineering, and industry fellow Todd Feldman. Three Omani students in the Nebraska MAE program were part of the competition.