2026
May
Congratulations to Ben Aaron, Amelia Landy, Abigail Peters, and Zoe Sperduto for graduating from Swarthmore! Ben Aaron and Zoe Sperduto were awarded the McCabe Award, presented each year to the “outstanding engineering student of the graduating class”, and Abigail Peters was awarded the Albert Vollmecke Engineering Service Award, presented annually for outstanding service to the student engineering community.
April
Congratulations to Ben Aaron ’26 and Zoe Sperduto ’26 who were each awarded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships! Ben will be pursuing a PhD in Civil Engineering at the University of Delaware and Zoe will be pursuing an SM-PhD in Civil Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
February
Our latest research article titled, Spatial Variation of Parallel to Grain Tensile Strength is now available in Probabilistic Engineering Mechanics. This work presents a framework for considering within-member tensile strength variation considering clear wood variation and variation due to knots. Read the full article here.
2025
November
Prof. Fiona O’Donnell presented her research in Seeing the Forest for the Trees, a webinar hosted by the MIT Department of Architecture and industry partner WholeTrees Structures. The online discussion was was presented by the Palazzo Diedo in Venice, Italy, during the closing events of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
October
Congratulations to Zoe Sperduto ’26 who was awarded second place in the Undergraduate Poster Competition at the Society of Women Engineers conference! Her poster, Designing a Sustainable Built Environment with Heterogenous Materials: Recommendations for Improved Material Testing Standards in Wood, compared published standards for determining wood compression perpendicular-to-grain yield strength and provided recommendations for the American clear wood testing standard.
September
Kenny Relovsky ’27 and Zoe Sperduto ’26 presented their summer research outcomes at the Swarthmore Sigma Xi Poster Session.
July
Students Zoe Sperduto ’26 and Amelia Landry ’26 traveled with Prof. Fiona O’Donnell to attend the International Conference on Structures and Architecture held in Antwerp, Belgium. Prof. O’Donnell presented their paper, U.S. Perspectives on Deconstruction and Reuse of Structural Wood Products.
June
Prof. O’Donnell is on sabbatical! She will be spending the year at Northeastern University collaborating with Dr. Jerome Hajjar and the STReSS Lab. Students Zoe Sperduto ’26 and Kenny Relovsky ’27 will join Prof. O’Donnell at the STReSS lab this summer to help with experimental testing and data analysis of novel steel-CLT deconstructable connections.
Prof. O’Donnell presented A Finite Element Model for Steel-CLT Deconstructable Connections at the Computational Methods in Wood Mechanics conference held in Vienna, Austria.
Swarthmore’s ASCE Chapter competed in the ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championship in San Luis Obispo. Congratulations to our Sustainable Solutions competition team: Elijah Dillow ’27, Haven Wenzel ’28, Amelia Landry ’26, Vanessa Gonzalez-Rychener ’28, and Raymond Brandon ’27. We’re so proud of your hard work, excellent presentation, and sportsmanship.
May
Congratulations to Swarthmore Wood Mechanics Lab graduates Matt Gutow, Cole Griscavage, and Bryan Rosario!
Swarthmore’s ASCE Chapter won the ASCE Philadelphia Section President’s Award. We’re incredibly honored and proud to be recognized with this award. Congratulations to this small but mighty chapter, and thank you to Ben Aaron and Elijah Dillow for their leadership serving on the Executive Board.
April
Ben Aaron was an NCUR Engineering Division Video Contest Awardee. Check out his submission here!
Swarthmore’s American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) Chapter won the Sustainable Solutions competition at the Mid-Atlantic East student symposium! Thank you to Elijah Dillow and Amelia Crill for their leadership and congratulations to the team for their great work!
February
Four student poster presentations were accepted to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) held in April 2025 in Pittsburgh, PA. Congratulations to:
- Elisabeth O’Connor and Matt Gutow for their poster titled Investigation of Variation in Characterization Methods for Mechanical Properties of CLT Constituent Lumber
- Ben Aaron for his poster titled Spatial Variation in Structural Lumber Strength: Experimental Testing and Probabilistic Model
Ethan Pang and Bryan Rosario for their poster titled Facilitating Reuse of Wood and Engineered Wood Products - Amelia Landry, Abigail Peters, and Zoe Sperduto for their poster titled Design for Deconstruction and Reuse of Cross Laminated Timber: Recommendations and Guidelines for U.S. Implementation
2024
December
Prof. Fiona O’Donnell presented a guest lecture to the Kansas State University Civil Engineering Department titled Towards Sustainability in the Built Environment: Frameworks for Increasing Material Efficiency of Mass Timber.
June
Abigail Peters’ summer research was highlighted on Swarthmore’s LinkedIn page.
May
Ben Aaron ’26, Abigail Peters ’26, and Elisabeth O’Connor ’27, joined the lab as Summer Research Assistants!
Kevin Murillo ’24 graduated and was awarded the McCabe Award, presented each year to the “outstanding engineering student of the graduating class”. Good luck to Kevin on his next chapter as a Ph.D. student in the Aero/Astro Department at Stanford University!