CEE Doctoral Student Receives Coral Sales Company Douglas P. Daniels Scholarship

We are proud to congratulate Portland State University Civil & Environmental Engineering PhD student Kayla Sorenson on another award! Kayla has been awarded the 2023-2024 Coral Sales Company/Douglas P. Daniels Scholarship.

Kayla is also the recipient of the 2023 Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship, the 2023-2024 Fellowship for Earthquake Risk Mitigation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI), the Carl Green Endowed Graduate Fellowship, and the Society of Women Engineers National Chapter 2023 Greenley and Hansen Nicole B. Spieles Memorial Scholarship.

Coral Sales Company/Douglas P. Daniels Scholarship is awarded to students pursuing a career in Highway/Transportation Engineering or Highway Construction in the Pacific Northwest, demonstrating outstanding leadership qualities and participation in extracurricular activities, both civic as well as professional. Kayla exemplifies this award by serving on the EERI's Student Leadership Council since 2020 and as co-president last year. Kayla is also involved in the EERI PSU student chapter, attending multiple outreach events aimed at strengthening the ties between the community, industry professionals, and local government officials.

Kayla's research focuses on the liquefaction susceptibility of fine-graned soils using the emerging method of microbially induced desaturation (MID). Liquefaction is detrimental to transportation infrastructure, and many of the oldest and most vital transportation lifelines were built on vulnerable soils. While existing mitigation methods are costly, newer techniques like MID show promise by using bacteria to release gases that stabilize the soil. Kayla's ongoing research aims to determine the necessary desaturation levels in non-plastic and low-plastic soils to effectively mitigate liquefaction risk.