Dean's Fellow Making Childhood Aspirations a Reality

Engineering Dean’s Fellow Uddav Ghimire dreamed of becoming a doctoral student in the United States from a young age. Hailing from Nepal, the CAEM student’s research aspirations became a reality at the College of Engineering with multi-year funding from the Dean’s Fellowship.

Becoming a University of Arizona student has afforded more access to technology and resources including research funding, said Ghimire.

Ghimire is probing a relatively new area of research designed to understand how soil – altered by climate change – will impact infrastructure.

Climate change is known to cause extended flooding and droughts, which upsets water resources and increases the likelihood of soil salinization. Soil salinization – the accumulation of salt on top of soil – is widely considered a threat to arid land regions. High salt concentrations stunt plant growth and cause soil deterioration.

Ghimire is zeroing in on what this means for public works.

“In terms of geotechnical engineering, I’m asking how the strength of the soil increases or decreases and how that affects the dams and all the infrastructure that is built on the soil,” said Ghimire.

With the mentorship of adviser Tejo V. Bheemasetti, assistant professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics, Ghimire is analyzing soil samples taken from an area in South Dakota with excessive salt deposits to answer some of those questions.

“Uddav is investigating the role of salinity on the behavior of soils and developing risk assessment tools that can be helpful to stakeholders including the Bureau of Land Management, NRCS and dam safety officers,” said Bheemasetti.