CEES
doctoral student Allison Quiroga has been awarded a Hughes Centennial
Fellowship by the OU Gallogly College of Engineering. The fellowship is provided by OU alumnus and
GCoE Executive Committee member Mr. Robert W. Hughes (BSChemE, 1958).
A
native of the Dallas/Fort Worth metro, Quiroga is both a National Merit and a
National Hispanic Scholar. She was named
the Outstanding Senior in Architectural Engineering in CEES upon completion of her
bachelor’s degree in 2012 and received her master’s degree in civil engineering
with a geotechnical emphasis from CEES in 2013.
Quiroga
has worked with her advisor, professor “Muralee” Muraleetharan, since her sophomore
year. As an undergraduate she was a
recipient of the National Science Foundation funded Louis Stokes Alliance for
Minority Participation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics grant. In addition, she just completed the Bridge to Doctorate program
which is also funded by NSF and is
awarded annually to successful LSAMP STEM recipients. Both programs are administered by the Gallogly
College of Engineering Minorities in Engineering Program. “I am grateful to former student Zac Thompson
who helped mentor me as an undergraduate student in the lab. I’ve been able to be involved in many cool
projects through the years like the full-scale field test in Miami, Oklahoma
where we used a large in-situ mixer to test for lateral capacity of piles and determine
whether or not the capacity increased when the soil around the pile was
strengthened.”
Quiroga’s
research is focused on creating a constitutive model that will estimate the
strength behavior of a cement mixed clay soil element with an emphasis on
cyclic behavior. “We hope long-term to
incorporate this model with other techniques to gain a better understanding of
the ways cement improvement may benefit whole structures under earthquake
loading”, said Quiroga.
While
here at OU she co-found the Architectural Engineering Institute student
organization and was a member of Alpha Sigma Kappa - Women in Technical Studies
organization. She is currently an
officer of the Geo-Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
Student Chapter.
“I am excited and honored to accept this award
and am looking forward to continuing my work in CEES”, said Quiroga.
After
graduation Quiroga plans to continue her research and teach in higher
education.
