Each year, the CEM/CME programme awards the best MSc thesis with the CEM/CME Master Thesis Award. The awarding of the best thesis of 2022-2023 was on 20 October during the BSc Civil Engineering Diploma ceremony.
This year, the research groups involved in the Civil Engineering & Management (CEM) and Construction Management & Engineering (CME) Master’s programmes nominated four candidates for their Thesis award.
The nominated theses were inspected by a jury that consisted of three examination board members, each representing a different research group within CEM. All theses have been awarded with a grade 9 and even a 9.5 and all studies have been conducted thoroughly and prove good scientific research. Overall, it has been difficult for the jury to declare a winner as the quality of all nominated theses was very high. This year in particular, the engineering components of the theses stood out most. The 2022-2023 nominees were:
- Birgit de Lange (WEM): Sediment nourishments in the River Waal to mitigate bed degradation : a numerical modelling study.
- Leon Besselink (WEM): Dike breach flood prediction of an LSTM compared to the HAND.FLOW model for real-time flood forecasting.
- Lianne Cortenbach (TEM): The dial-a-ride problem with meeting points : a problem formulation for shared demand responsive transit.
- Abrohom Demir (CME): Multi-Objective Optimization of Flexible Pavement Design from an Environmental and Economic Perspective.
Considering the excellent quality of research from all nominees, the jury based its judgment mainly on the main criteria: the mix of technical and non-technical aspects (including management aspects), the societal relevance, the innovative aspects and the quality of both research and reporting.
The jury members had a discussion and all theses scored outstanding on societal relevance, innovation and the quality on research and reporting. The high grades that the students got are more than deserved. At the end, it was remarkably close, where each thesis scored high on specific parts. However, there was one thesis that received slightly higher scores on the innovative aspects and the quality of both research and writing.
The winner of the CEM/CME Thesis Award 2022-2023 is: Lianne Cortenbach
We congratulate Lianne with this award, including a check of EUR 1.000 and of course eternal fame.
The UT is glad that Lianne continues her work as a PhD student at the Transport Engineering & Management research department.
