Herff Civil Engineering students to compete in ASCE National Competition
April 26, 2026
For the first time in nearly two decades, a team of students from the Herff College of Engineering will represent the University of Memphis at the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE) national student competitions in 2026.
The team won the ASCE Mid-South Symposium’s Sustainable Solutions competition with their proposal for a water-efficient data center. Nearly a dozen teams all received the same prompt from the ASCE: engineer a data center, located along a river and in close proximity to a wastewater treatment facility, that is resilient, conserves as much water as possible, serves the community, and will be built near a residential zone.
It’s a prompt that literally hits close to home Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering Dodi Iman who served as a co-captain for the team.
“We envisioned this project being in Memphis. How do we make sure the supercomputer and the community are benefiting from this and not being harmfully impacted?” Iman said.
Nearly a dozen teams from the Mid-South were given the same assignment and told to draw inspiration from existing data centers. The prompt offered Herff’s team home-field advantage with xAI in its backyard.
“I think most of the schools were inspired by xAI, either because of what they’re doing or what they’re not doing,” Iman said. “xAI did inspire us because, originally, they were using wastewater. They wanted to do wastewater treatment. In recent times, they have fallen back on that and it has become way more controversial.”
The team of Herff students, including Iman, co-captain junior Lee Butler and junior Alona Alonso, chose to design a data center that used water from the local wastewater treatment facility to cool the computers. The team then incorporated an on-site water treatment facility in order to recycle the water.
“When you run the water through the cycle multiple times, it gathers a lot of chemicals from the copper and computers. So that becomes blowdown; it needs to go to an industrial sewage plant for treatment. In our design, we have a pre-treatment plant on site. It recycles itself. So, we’re mitigating blowdown,” Iman said.
The team also took community impact into account when developing their plan. Alonso said their proposal costs less than half of what xAI’s original Memphis data center cost.
“We’re trying to work with the community and that was in our proposal as well, the stakeholder engagement, working with the community to kind of offset their fears of construction and how it’s going to affect the environment,” Alonso said.
The regional victory earned the students a spot in the national competition in West Virginia, marking the first University of Memphis team to go to the national competition since the University of Memphis sent a team to the ASCE Concrete Canoe competition in 2009. Herff’s students dethroned Vanderbilt as the reigning Mid-South Sustainable Solutions winners in the regional competition.
“One thing I noticed in our poster presentation is that we are a small but mighty force going to nationals,” Butler said. “Vanderbilt had, I think, 12 people on their team. It just shows that we put so much effort and work into this and made focused decisions; I think that reflects a broader attitude that I have towards the university as a whole and what it means for us to go to nationals. We’re small but mighty and y’all need to hear us. The university has a fantastic program that people should consider when they’re looking into building a career in engineering.”
Although being part of a three-person team meant each member carried a heavier load, Alonso said Herff’s team's size led to more fluid communication.
“It’s just smoother communication,” Alonso said. “You don’t have 1,000 people working on five different things. You don’t have a bunch of people on a proposal all sounding different. Having just three of us feels like having one voice.”
The ASCE added Sustainable Solutions to its student competitions in recent years, reflecting a growing need across construction and the necessity to limit and preserve available resources.
“I think in terms of demonstrating to employers and demonstrating to graduate programs, this project builds such a fantastic portfolio. This is what we did. This is what we can do. Here are our documents detailing our plans. It demonstrates this level of thought and care that went into the project. I think, as the field of engineering has evolved over the 21st century, that is very critical, and that’s why ASCE wants people to do these kinds of projects.”
As Iman prepares to enter graduate school, he said he’ll carry with him the environmental awareness he acquired while developing this project.
“When I think about this project specifically, the data center project does scare me a little bit,” Iman said. “Through all of our research, we realized this has a big impact. But it also inspires me because they need people like us to be on a project like this to make sure it has a good impact on the community.”
Thanks to Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering Chair Dr. Rouzbeh Nazari, the team will be fully funded when they go to West Virginia for the national competition, including airfare, hotel rooms, and a rental car. That financial support allows the team to solely focus on defending their presentation.
“All of us have a good design,” Iman said. “We have a great poster. We’re all able to defend everything in this project and what makes me confident in us, in our performance and our ability to bring home the trophy.”