Xiaohang Ji, doctoral candidate in Penn State's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, received two scholarships totaling $7,500 from the Deep Foundations Industry Trust. Credit: Xiaohang Ji
Graduate student receives Deep Foundations Institute awards
August 9, 2022
By Mary Fetzer
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Xiaohang Ji, a doctoral candidate studying geotechnical and materials engineering in Penn State’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is the recipient of two scholarships from the Deep Foundations Institute (DFI) Educational Trust.
Ji received a $5,000 award from the Charles J. Berkel Memorial Scholarship Fund and a $2,500 award from the Francis Gularte Civil Engineering Scholarship Fund. Both at-large scholarships are awarded to civil engineering students attending a university or college in the United States.
Ji earned a bachelor of science in civil engineering from Shangdong University in China and a master’s degree in geotechnical engineering from the University of Michigan. In fall 2020, she joined the research team of Ming Xiao, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Penn State.
Ji will use the awards to further her research, which involves using distributed acoustic sensing to examine and forecast long-term geophysical and geomechanical variations in permafrost in the Arctic.
“I am very excited to receive these scholarships,” Ji said. “Climate change is accelerating the warming and thawing of permafrost, causing significant damages to foundations and civil infrastructure in the circumpolar regions. If we can better understand and predict the changing permafrost characteristics, we can begin to provide solutions to improve infrastructure.”
The DFI is an international association of engineers, contractors, manufacturers, suppliers, project owners, educators and students who are involved in the design and construction of deep foundations and excavations, according to its website. The DFI Educational Trust supports and encourages individuals in the fields of study related to the deep foundations industry by providing scholarships and opportunities to meet and work with deep foundations industry leaders.
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