Warren Distinguished Lecture Series
The Warren Distinguished Lecture Series is made possible through a generous, renewing gift from Alice Warren Gaarden. CEGE is continually thankful for her generosity, which allows us to bring in researchers and practitioners to share their knowledge with students, faculty, and friends of CEGE. A lecture is held most Fridays (September to May) at 10:10 a.m. in the George J. Schroepfer Conference Theatre (room 210) in the Civil Engineering Building.
If you cannot join us in person, please join us online. Register and join.
Find our archive on YouTube @umnCEGE
Fall 2026 Overview
September
11 Sebastian Behrens, University of Minnesota - Environmental
18 Ardeshir Ebtehaj, University of Minnesota - Environmental
25 Boya Xiong, University of Minnesota - Environmental
October
2 3-min Thesis, Graduate Students, University of Minnesota Sebastian – all areas
9 Dexter Lecture: Ronald D. Ziemian, Civil Engineering, Bucknell University - Structures
16 Xubin Zeng, Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona - Water Resources
23 Na Wei, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign - Environmental
30 Brian Park, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Virginia - Transportation
November
6 Heidi Nepf, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Water Resources
13 Jiaqi Ma, UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, University of California Los Angeles - Transportation
20 Sheng Dai, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology - Geomechanics
27 No Lecture — Thanksgiving Holiday
December
4 Assad Oberai, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern California - Structures
11 Sehlin Lecture: Troy S. Magney, Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana
Upcoming Events
Physical AI for Autonomous Mobility: Connecting Reasoning to Safe Action
Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, 10:10 a.m.
210 Civil Engineering Building at the University of Minnesota
or
Online (registration is required; information will be sent to your email)
A Warren Distinguished Lecture
with Jiaqi Ma
Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Computer Science
University of California, Los Angeles
Autonomous vehicles must make timely decisions in environments shaped by incomplete information, unpredictable human behavior, and changing road conditions. How can advances in artificial intelligence help these systems reason about unfamiliar situations and act safely? In this talk Jiaqi Ma presents recent research on physical AI for autonomous mobility, connecting models that learn from images, language, and actions with world models that predict the consequences of decisions. Examples from autonomous driving and robotic navigation illustrate how reasoning, memory, and feedback can support decisions under uncertainty. Jiaqi Ma also examines how simulation, digital twins, and interactive testing can reveal failures that conventional benchmarks miss. A central theme is the need to connect advances in model capability with credible evidence of safe behavior in the physical world.
Engineering of High-pressure Testing of Oceanic Sediments that Want to Explode
Friday, Nov. 20, 2026, 10:10 a.m.
210 Civil Engineering Building at the University of Minnesota
or
Online (registration is required; information will be sent to your email)
A Warren Distinguished Lecture
with Sheng Dai
Geosystems Engineering
Georgia Tech
Gas hydrate looks like ordinary ice, but it traps enormous volumes of methane within marine sediments and permafrost soils, then collapses within minutes of reaching the ground surface. Fifty years of pressure-coring innovation, from 1970s leaky valves to today's high-pressure characterization chambers, has given engineers a way to recover, transfer, and test the sediments containing methane hydrate without ever letting them depressurize. The resulting data now shapes energy, climate, and offshore landslide research worldwide.
All the Light We Cannot See: Tracking Earth’s Carbon and Water Through the Biosphere
Friday, Dec. 11, 2026, 10:10 a.m.
210 Civil Engineering Building at the University of Minnesota
or
Online (registration is required; information will be sent to your email)
A Warren Distinguished Lecture
and Sehlin Lecture with
Troy S. Magney
Department of Forest Management
University of Montana
Past Events
Physical AI for Autonomous Mobility: Connecting Reasoning to Safe Action
Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, 10:10 a.m.
210 Civil Engineering Building at the University of Minnesota
or
Online (registration is required; information will be sent to your email)
A Warren Distinguished Lecture
with Jiaqi Ma
Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Computer Science
University of California, Los Angeles
Autonomous vehicles must make timely decisions in environments shaped by incomplete information, unpredictable human behavior, and changing road conditions. How can advances in artificial intelligence help these systems reason about unfamiliar situations and act safely? In this talk Jiaqi Ma presents recent research on physical AI for autonomous mobility, connecting models that learn from images, language, and actions with world models that predict the consequences of decisions. Examples from autonomous driving and robotic navigation illustrate how reasoning, memory, and feedback can support decisions under uncertainty. Jiaqi Ma also examines how simulation, digital twins, and interactive testing can reveal failures that conventional benchmarks miss. A central theme is the need to connect advances in model capability with credible evidence of safe behavior in the physical world.
Vegetation Hydrodynamics Informing Nature-Based Solutions for Coastal Protection
Friday, Nov. 6, 2026, 10:10 a.m.
210 Civil Engineering Building at the University of Minnesota
or
Online (registration is required; information will be sent to your email)
A Warren Distinguished Lecture with
Heidi Nepf
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
* Live only - session will not be recorded
Coastal vegetation is considered an integral part of coastal resilience. Predicting the function and value of these ecosystems requires models for the interaction of fluid motion with flexible vegetation. In this talk, Heidi Nepf describes scaling laws to predict the drag on individual plants and the extension of these laws to predict wave decay over a meadow of plants. The models are used in two application examples.
Cooperative Driving in Mixed Traffic: Connecting Human Drivers, Automated Vehicles, and AI
Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, 10:10 a.m.
210 Civil Engineering Building at the University of Minnesota
or
Online (registration is required; information will be sent to your email)
A Warren Distinguished Lecture with
B. Brian Park
Civil & Environmental Engineering and
Systems & Information Engineering
University of Virginia
Cooperative platooning is a promising technology for connected and automated vehicles, but its benefits are often limited in mixed traffic where human-driven vehicles disrupt vehicle-to-vehicle cooperation. This presentation highlights three complementary approaches for improving safety, mobility, and energy efficiency during the early stages of connected vehicle deployment.
Harnessing Synthetic Biology to Turn Waste to Value
Friday, Oct. 23, 2026, 10:10 a.m.
210 Civil Engineering Building at the University of Minnesota
or
Online (registration is required; information will be sent to your email)
A Warren Distinguished Lecture with
Na Wei
Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
The growing challenges of environmental contamination and natural resource scarcity call for innovative solutions to ensure a sustainable future. The potential of synthetic biology is gaining increasing attention. Na Wei discusses her recent research work in leveraging synthetic biology to address waste-to-value challenges. Examples include i) engineering microbial cells and discovering enzymes for plastic degradation and upcycling, and ii) engineering functionalized biomaterials for recovering rare earth elements from waste streams. Underlying these research studies is the combined use of synthetic and molecular biology techniques, bioprocess and environmental engineering principles, and AI-driven approaches to solve emerging environmental challenges.
Observing and Understanding Snowpack and the Water Cycle over the Conterminous United States
Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, 10:10 a.m.
210 Civil Engineering Building at the University of Minnesota
or
Online (registration is required; information will be sent to your email)
A Warren Distinguished Lecture with
Xubin Zeng
Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences
University of Arizona
Snowpack includes snow mass, depth, and coverage. It affects weather, climate, and water prediction. It is also important for our culture and economy. In this lecture, Zeng overviews some of his group's relevant work.
Over 100 Years of Design by Advanced Analysis
Friday, Oct. 9, 2026, 10:10 a.m.
A Warren Distinguished Lecture
and Dexter Memorial Lecture
with Ron Ziemian
Civil Engineering
Bucknell University
In this talk, Ron Ziemian follows John Baker's work to establish plastic design in the UK, its arrival in the United States through the US Navy and Lehigh University, and Lynn Beedle's work to bring it into mainstream steel design.
Three-Minute Thesis Competition
Friday, Oct. 2, 2026, 10:10 a.m.
CEGE Graduate Students
Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering
University of Minnesota
Five CEGE graduate students compete to deliver their research thesis in just three minutes!
3MT develops academic, presentation, and research communication skills and supports the development of research students' capacity to quickly explain their research in a language appropriate to a non-specialist audience leaving them wanting to know more.
Beyond the Bulk: Mechanistic Insights into Nanoplastic Release and the Environmental Fate of Polymers
Friday, Sept. 25, 2026, 10:10 a.m.
A Warren Distinguished Lecture with
Boya Xiong
Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering
University of Minnesota
With global plastic production projected to triple by mid-century, understanding the environmental fate of plastics is paramount. While bulk plastics are visibly persistent, their environmental degradation generates a complex spectrum of highly mobile products, including micro- and nanoplastics (MP/NPs), dissolved carbon, and CO2. Nanoplastics readily infiltrate biological tissues and yet remain notoriously difficult to quantify and characterize. Foundational estimations are essential for conducting robust risk and life cycle assessments, ultimately informing science-based policymaking on how we should produce, use, and discard plastics.
Advancing Cold Region Monitoring through Microwave Remote Sensing and Physics-Informed Machine Learning
Friday, Sept. 18, 2026, 10:10 a.m.
210 Civil Engineering Building at the University of Minnesota
or
Online (registration is required; information will be sent to your email)
A Warren Distinguished Lecture with
Ardeshir Ebtehaj
Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering
University of Minnesota
In this presentation, Ardeshir Ebtehaj highlights recent research advances in estimating soil moisture, land surface freeze–thaw states, snow water equivalent, and lake ice phenology using spaceborne L-band microwave radiometry from NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission.
Microbial interactions with anthropogenic pyrogenic carbon in soils and wastewater
Friday, Sept. 11, 2026, 10:10 a.m.
A Warren Distinguished Lecture with
Sebastian Behrens
Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering
University of Minnesota
Behrens highlights his research on biochar–microbe interactions in soil and water and how they can impact microbial nutrient cycling and contaminant degradation processes. He presents data on how biochar and microbial processes impact each other and how this can help us to better understand biochar’s role in managing soil quality and soil/water remediation efforts. Finally, he discusses the need to develop guidelines on selecting and producing biochar formulations to meet specific soil and environmental constraints.