Carnegie Mellon’s Burcu Akinci Honored by Industry Consortium

April 28, 2008

Contact: Chriss Swaney
Carnegie Mellon
(412) 268-5776

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University’s Burcu Akinci was selected to receive the prestigious 2008 CETI (Celebration of Engineering and Technology Innovation) Award from the FIATEC industry consortium for significant achievements in new and emerging technology research.
                 
Akinci, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon, received the award for “Outstanding Early Career Researcher’’ earlier this month in New Orleans, La.
                  
“I am honored to receive this award because the recognition shows the industry significance of my research on using automated data capture technologies to model construction project histories to support a variety of decisions throughout the life-cycle of facilities,” said Akinci, one of 12 recipients at FIATEC’s annual award gala.
                
FIATECH, an industry consortium that provides global leadership in identifying and deploying fully-integrated and automated technologies to a wide variety of capital projects, had more than 50 nominations for 12 different award categories ranging from outstanding early career researcher to life cycle data management and information integration.
                  
“Burcu Akinci is highly deserving of this prestigious award from FIATECH,” said James H. Garrett Jr., professor and head of Carnegie Mellon’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and one of the award judges.  “She has been doing high quality research related to the use of laser scanning and RFID technology on construction sites, in addition to the use of building information models throughout the facility life-cycle, which are technologies that FIATECH is trying  to have more fully adopted by the construction industry to create Intelligent Construction Jobsites.”
                  
Akinci’s work focuses on leveraging information models and a variety of sensors to streamline construction and facility-management practices. She also recently helped launch a new project-based international construction project-management course with students from the United States, Turkey, Israel and Brazil.
                    
Akinci has received numerous accolades for her expertise and professional services, including the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Award in 2005, the George Tallman Ladd Research Award from Carnegie Mellon’s College of Engineering in 2003, a Liberman Fellowship at Stanford University’s Engineering School and a NATO doctoral student scholarship through the Turkish National Science Foundation.
                  
Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon in 2000, Akinci worked as a project engineer on several multi-story housing and water treatment projects in Turkey. 
                   
She earned a master’s degree and Ph.D. in civil engineering from Stanford University in 1995 and 2000, respectively. She received her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Middle East Technical University in 1991, and earned an MBA from turkey’s Bilkent University in 1993.
                   
Other FIATECH award reviewers and judges included industry experts from The Dow Chemical Company, ConocoPhillips, Engineering News-Record Magazine, Zachry Construction and Autodesk.  

About Carnegie Mellon: Carnegie Mellon is a private research university with a distinctive mix of programs in engineering, computer science, robotics, business, public policy, fine arts and the humanities. More than 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students receive an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration, and innovation. A small student-to-faculty ratio provides an opportunity for close interaction between students and professors. While technology is pervasive on its 144-acre Pittsburgh campus, Carnegie Mellon is also distinctive among leading research universities for the world-renowned programs in its College of Fine Arts. A global university, Carnegie Mellon has campuses in Silicon Valley, Calif., and Qatar, and programs in Asia, Australia and Europe. For more, see www.cmu.edu.