Moriah Hughes received 2024 SEAS Award for Excellence

Oct. 9, 2024

CEE graduate student Moriah Hughes is a recipient of the 2024 School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) Award for Excellence. “This prestigious honor is awarded to advanced graduate students within SEAS who have performed at the highest level as scholars and researchers.”

Moriah’s research is in the field of historical preservation, and the focus of her research is on the resilience of large historical rural timber structures of American Midwest that have exceptional importance for American agriculture, economy, society, and cultural and technological heritage. Derecho winds that occur in the Midwest, and are becoming more frequent and more violent due to the climate change, represent the most important hazard to these structures. Main challenges in assessing and improving resilience of these historic structures are related to lack of models that describe the loading caused by the derecho wind; lack of systematic methodology for assessment of structural behaviors of these historical structures, often built by local craftsmen and master builders based on pure intuition and tradition, i.e., without scientific approach or the use of codes; and finally, the fact that they are still in active use. Successful achievement of Moriah’s research will empower societies with socially, culturally, ecologically, and economically responsible solutions resulting in sustainable and livable rural communities that are resilient to the threat of the effects of climate change. The impacts of the research will not remain limited to the rural communities, but will inevitably spread into the societies that depend on these communities.