Professor Emeritus John A. Dracup passed away at his Santa Monica home on December 20, 2021, surrounded by family. He was 87 years old. 

Dracup joined the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley in 2000, after serving for 35 years on the faculty at UCLA. As a hydrologist, Dracup's research centered on the impact of climate change on hydrolic processes, and the optimization of groundwater and large-scale river basin systems.

According to a new study by Professor Stefano Schiavon, women are inequitably impacted by air temperature in office settings. Published in Scientific Reports, the report finds that women are more likely than men to experience discomfort from overcooling, in which air conditioning systems cool down rooms more than is necessary. It concludes that there is a need to rethink the approach to air-conditioning office buildings, to both address this inequity and the energy expense from wasteful cooling.

Congratulations to nine UC Berkeley ITS-affiliated students who received Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program awards for the coming year, including six students affiliated with CEE.

Winners and their research include:

Covid-WEB, an arm of Professor Kara Nelson's research lab, has been helping to track the spread of the COVID-19 disease in waste facilities across California, including sites in the Bay Area. Covid-WEB monitors wastewater for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which can indicate the presence of the COVID-19 disease in a community. This early detection can help communities respond to the virus or new variants before an outbreak. 

Research by Professor Susan Shaheen and PhD student Jessica Lazarus is featured in the latest issue of Transfers Magazine. In "To Pool or Not to Pool," Shaheen and Lazarus examine how pooling, when multiple travelers share a ride in the same vehicle, can alleviate some of the challenges resulting from on-demand mobility services and transportation network companies (TNCs), like Uber and Lyft.