The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has awarded Gilbert Winslow Career Development Chairs to three of its faculty members for outstanding accomplishments in teaching and research.
Associate Professor John B. Miller is a civil engineer specializing in the fields of project delivery and finance, with a focus on procurement issues related to public infrastructure projects. His research deals mainly with developing and implementing a comprehensive methodology for maintaining and improving collections of transportation, water, wastewater and other public infrastructure projects using variations in project delivery and finance methods as a principle tool. He is a 1998 recipient of a National Science Foundation Career award. Before returning to MIT to earn the PhD (1995), Professor Miller practiced construction and government contracts law for 15 years. He received the SB and SM in civil engineering from MIT (1974), and the JD (1977) and LM (1982) from Boston University School of Law. He was appointed an assistant professor at MIT in July 1995.
Assistant Professor Martin Polz is an environmental microbiologist whose scientific interests are in the structure and population dynamics of microbial communities, interactions of bacteria and other organisms, and the phylogeny and evolution of microorganisms. His research focuses on predicting and controlling processes such as the bioremediation or avoidance of pathogen outbreaks in the environment. He earned the AM in 1995 and the PhD in 1997, both from Harvard University, and he holds the MS in zoology from the University of Vienna (1991). He joined the MIT faculty in January 1998.
Associate Professor Franz-Josef Ulm is a civil engineer whose research interests lie in bridging the theoretical mechanics of porous media, numerical modeling and physical chemistry with applications to concrete and other structural and geological materials. He joined MIT as an associate professor in January 1999 after working as a research engineer for four years and then heading the section on mechanical behavior and modeling for a year at the Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chauss�es in France. Professor Ulm earned the civil engineering degree from the Technische Universit������t in Munich (1990), the SM (1990) and PhD (1994) from the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chauss�es, and the Habilitation degree to become a university professor (1998) from the Ecole Normale Sup�rieure de Cachan.
A version of this article appeared in the June 2, 1999 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 43, Number 32).
