Ana P. Barros, NAE Donald Biggar Willett Chair of Engineering and Head
Celeste Bock Senior Director of Advancement Operations (217) 333-6955 celeste@illinois.edu
Steven Hall Interim Associate Dean for Advancement (217) 300-7830 stevhall@illinois.edu
Kristina Shidlauski Associate Director of Communications
Vicki Dixon Associate Director of Operations
Keely K. Ashman Assistant Director of Alumni and Corporate Relations
Sheree Fruzen Office Manager
CEE Magazine
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
The Grainger College of Engineering University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
1201 Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory MC-250
205 North Mathews Avenue Urbana, Illinois 61801
cee.illinois.edu
With Gratitude and Determination/Ana Barros
CEEAA President’s message/David Byrd
CEE alumni tailgate, golf outing
Your alumni representatives: the CEEAA Board
The impact of your gifts
Nanoscale observations simplify description of earthquake movement
Environmental Engineering B.S. degree program on the way Kontou drives electric vehicles forward in U.S., Illinois
Can we evacuate from hurricanes in electric vehicles?
Ask a professor: hurricane winds
Young alumni mentoring program
Rare photos, video of 1972 concrete canoe team
Improved wastewater monitoring for disease control
Mapping areas of traffic pollution through edge computing
ICT releases video of future autonomous track
Distinguished faculty honored: Dempsey, Ghaboussi, Yen
Department news
Garcia elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union
Cusick wins CAREER award
Steel bridge team competes at nationals
Halil Ceylan, Arun Chaiseri honored with campus alumni awards
In memoriam: T.C. Kao
Parting Shot: CEE welcomes the future
Mineral-rich waters originating from the Apennine Mountains of Italy flowed through ancient Rome’s Anio Novus aqueduct and left behind a detailed rock record of past hydraulic conditions, researchers said. Two studies characterizing layered limestone – called travertine – deposits within the Anio Novus are the first to document the occurrence of anti-gravity growth ripples and establish that these features lend clues to the history of ancient water conveyance and storage systems.
CEE at Illinois hosted high school students for a weeklong summer camp through the Worldwide Youth in Science and Engineering program. The CEE camp introduced the students to the ways in which civil and environmental engineers are addressing societal challenges.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory and a team of academic and community leaders – including UIUC – $25 million over five years to advance urban climate science by studying climate change effects at local and regional scales.
A new research project funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) will examine the impacts on climate of sea salt aerosol particles emitted from cracks in sea ice, or “leads.”
CEE assistant professor Hannah Horowitz leads the project, which is one of 22 that received an award from a $14 million DOE program.
CEEAA Board of Directors
President
David L. Byrd, P.E. (BS 01, MS 06)
Envista Forensics Deerfield, Ill.
Vice President
Dana B. Mehlman, P.E. (BS 99, MS 01)
Vedder Price PC Chicago
Second Vice President and Secretary
Daniel J. Whalen, P.E. (BS 84, MS 85)
Hanson Professional Services Inc. Springfield, Ill.
Past President
Paula C. Pienton, P.E., S.E. (BS 85) CN Homewood, Ill.
Directors
Ama O. Addai, P.E., (BS 04)
Ardmore Roderick Chicago
Jackie A. Becker, P.E. (BS 07)
Ameren Transmission St. Louis, Mo.
Kimberly Cummins, P.E. (BS 98) Cummins Engineering Corporation Springfield, Ill.
Kevin C. Fuhr, P.E. (BS 96)
Hanson Professional Services Chicago
Brian S. Heil, P.E., (BS 96, MS 97) Oates Associates Inc. Collinsville, Ill.
Matthew A. Johnson, P.E., S.E. (BS 04, MS 08)
Fehr Graham Champaign
Kurt A. Keifer, P.E. (BS 97, MS 99, PhD 06) IMS Infrastructure Management Services Tempe, Ariz.
Justin R. Lewis, P.E. (BS 07, MS 08)
Keller North America Chicago
Michael J. Mack, P.E. (BS 89) Burns & McDonnell Downer’s Grove, Ill.
Andrew J. Martin, P.E. (BS 98) Greeley and Hansen LLC Chicago
Douglas S. Pelletier (BS 95) Kiewit Chicago
Katherine Pripusich-Sienkiewicz (BS 03, MS 13) Amazon Web Services Chicago
Robert Risser (BS 87, MS89)
Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute Chicago
Richard Sieracki (BS 74) The Kenrich Group LLC Chicago
Michael Vitale, P.E. (BS 82, MS 84) Mott MacDonald Cleveland, Ohio
I am delighted to reach out as we approach the winter break and share my optimism for CEE as a new year awaits just a few weeks away on the horizon. The state of the department is very strong.
On the undergraduate front, enrollment numbers are promising; this fall we welcomed the largest number of first-year students in 10 years, resulting in about 690 undergraduate students in total. Our undergraduate curriculum redesign effort compares favorably with a recent report on the future of CEE education from the American Society of Civil Engineers which states, “Students need to learn systems thinking so that they are prepared for current and future societal challenges.” We have developed a new certificate in Data Science and Computing available to undergraduate students that will provide them with literacy in big data, machine learning and computing. For the first time in its history, beginning in fall 2023, the department will offer a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Engineering; previously all B.S. graduates earned degrees in Civil Engineering, regardless of concentration. We offer funded research opportunities for many of our undergraduate students each year through our Research Experience for Undergraduates program – thanks in large part to gifts from our alumni. Also thanks to your generosity, we continue to provide substantial funding to the student organizations that do so much to enhance the Illinois experience.
Our CEE graduate programs are equally strong. U.S. News & World Report ranks our online graduate program at No. 1, our graduate Civil Engineering program at No. 2, and our graduate Environmental
Engineering program at No. 3. We have more Ph.D. students than at any time in the past decade. New initiatives in the graduate program include four new M.S. tracks, including materials and manufacturing, systems, railway engineering and engineering mobility. Another new initiative is our Graduate Ambassadors Program, through which we are actively recruiting for our graduate programs at other universities in the Midwest, with the aim of increasing our numbers of domestic graduate students.
Our research enterprise has seen funding increase by 18.6% from FY20 to FY21. In FY22 our faculty had an unusually high number of winners of the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award, NSF’s most prestigious form of support and recognition for junior faculty – assistant professors R.D. Cusick, Franklin T. Lombardo, X. Shelly Zhang and Lei Zhao. Assistant professor Christopher Tessum won an equally prestigious Early Career Award from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Some exciting highlights of our research program include projects in Human-Centric Water and Energy, Community Resilience and Risk, Climate Change and Health, and Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation.
We are proud of the continued excellence of the department, but we never stop working toward improvement. The success of our efforts makes us all the more determined to keep advancing as we strive to meet the challenges of the 21st century as the world’s top civil and environmental engineering program. A key reason for our excellence is the support of our alumni and friends. One of the most prominent features in this issue of the magazine is our annual sec-
tion on the impact of your gifts. You will hear from young alumni about how our Research Experience for Undergraduates program affected their education and career trajectories. Other alumni talk about how our recruiting scholarships made it possible to attend Illinois and paved their way to successful careers. We are grateful for your gifts in these impactful areas, and we know we can count on your continued support to do even more in the coming years.
Even as we work to complete the furnishing of all our new laboratory spaces in the new Civil and Environmental Engineering Building, we have started planning for what I have begun to call “Newmark 2050.” We are thinking about the changes that will be necessary to ensure that Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory, our department’s home since the 1960s, will continue to enable excellence and serve our students, faculty and staff in the future.
In this season of Thanksgiving, know that we are grateful for all of you – our alumni and friends who remain engaged with the department; give of their time, talent and treasure to help CEE at Illinois maintain its longstanding excellence; and represent us so well as practicing professionals around the world.
Go Illini!
I have been fortunate to meet many CEE alumni since joining our alumni board over 14 years ago. Our alumni make a great living through their hard work and passion in building their careers on the foundation of their Illinois education. Exceptional alumni embody the quote above from Winston Churchill, understanding that using their knowledge and experience to advance their profession, community, and those who will follow them is what leads to a great life for us collectively.
The education we received at Illinois uniquely positions us as alumni to be of service outside of the daily tasks our careers demand of us. We can make a real impact on our neighbors by managing a capital project for the Homeowner’s Association we belong to, assisting our local park district with a rainwater runoff study, or volunteering to tutor math at the local elementary school.
As we turn the corner on living with a virus that has upended our lives the past
few years, we can again bring back into focus the work of achieving life’s goals and aspirations. I challenge all of you to incorporate service into some aspect of your life. Our Illinois education is a worldclass asset that can be put to greater use than simply paying the mortgage or rent.
The Civil and Environmental Engineering Alumni Association Board will realize 60 years of service to the department in 2023 and has established itself as an aspirational standard for the other departments within The Grainger College of Engineering at Illinois. An introduction to our current Board follows this message. They are an exceptional group of stewards working diligently to enhance the department, its students and our alumni base. I recommend you reach out to get to know them in the near future.
Our CEE Department is thriving! In addition to her typical Department Head duties, Dr. Barros and her team have successfully established a new stand-alone Environmental Engineering B.S degree
within the department – an impressive accomplishment that continues to elevate the department. Enrollment is increasing at CEE, which bucks the national trend of decreased enrollment in Civil Engineering departments nationally. Student recruiting efforts are focused on bringing the best and brightest high school graduates from our Illinois communities into the department to minimize the effects of population decline in our state.
I look forward to seeing everyone at our annual Alumni Awards Dinner on March 2, 2023. We had record attendance last year, and I am confident I will see even more of you to celebrate the accomplishments of our alumni. Also, the Board has added a St. Louis-based networking event on April 27, 2023, where our local alumni will have at least one networking event each year that isn’t dominated by their colleagues from Rolla or Mizzou. Be on the lookout for the addition of more alumni events in the coming year!
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
– Winston Churchill
And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming...From left, Keely Ashman, Michael Mack (BS 89), Dana Mehlman (BS 99, MS 01), Lynn Mack, Brian Heil (BS 96, MS 97), Noah Carmichael (BS 97), Abby Johnson and Matthew Johnson (BS 04, MS 08) at the CEE tailgate Oct. 8, 2022. Above, left to right: CEE students Nic Novak and Simon Crane with CEEAA board members Kevin Fuhr (BS 96), Kim Cummins (BS 98) and Dan Whelan (BS 84, MS 85) at the CEE tailgate Oct. 8, 2022.
Established in 1963, the CEE Alumni Association (CEEAA) works with and supports the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty, staff, students and alumni and works to inspire lifelong loyalty and pride among alumni and friends by developing and enhanc-
ing their continued relationship with the department. To fulfill its mission, the CEEAA has a Board of Directors to provide advice and counsel to the department, to recognize distinguished alumni, to foster collegial alumni relations and alumni support of the department, to mentor
students and facilitate their entry into the profession, to represent the department’s activities conducted by the CEEAA and to support the department’s public outreach activities.
Get to know our current Directors on the following pages.
Areas of expertise: Forensic Consulting/Construction Management
Executive with over 20 years of forensic consulting and construction management experience having a passion to build and lead technical teams and organizations. I joined the Board over 14 years ago as the Young Alumni delegate and take great pride in our efforts and accomplishments in serving the UIUC CEE Department and alumni base today and into the future.
Areas of Expertise: Environmental Law; Transaction and Regulatory
The further along in my career I get, the more I realize that there is no such thing as a “typical career path.” No matter where my career has taken me, I am forever grateful for the foundations in engineering and critical thinking that I received from the CEE Department at Illinois. The past decade I have spent on the CEEAA Board is just one tiny way that I have been able to give back to the department from which I learned so much and began to grow into the person I currently am, and the person I have yet to become.
Senior Vice President Hanson Professional Services Inc. Springfield, Ill.
Areas of expertise: Working with power industry clients, providing project planning, permitting, design and construction support services
My first professional employer in Washington, D.C., had founded his company in 1956 but had never hired a UIUC graduate before. He commented that I was the best prepared of all the engineers that they had hired out of college. (!) I am proud of my service to the Board of Directors, as a way to give back to the department that prepared me for my chosen profession, allowing me to successfully collaborate with clients and engineers from all over the world.
Chief Engineer, Bridges & Structures CN Homewood, Ill.
Areas of expertise: Freight and Transit projects; program management; project delivery
I was approached by the Board to inquire about my interest in joining as a Director at a time when I was completing several terms on our Local School Council (Chicago Public Schools) and ready to commit to more professional areas of volunteering. (This was when joining the Board was through invitation.) It was a great decision to engage with this group – finding a diverse team with a common background and mission, ensuring the continuity of the stature of the Civil and Environmental Engineering programs. Great avenue to engage with students and faculty and pay it forward to the next generation of engineers.
Areas of expertise: Program Management, Subsurface Utility Engineering, and Civil Site Development
I currently have the honor of managing and mentoring a team of 25+ civil and electrical engineers from diverse backgrounds. Together, we deliver a variety of Power & Gas Utility Design and Civil Site Development projects to Exelon, Chicago Transit Authority, Chicago Department of Transportation and more.
I joined the Board because I am passionate about the need for increased diversity in the Engineering industry and I believe through the UIUC CEEAA Board, we can invite more diverse voices to the table.
Areas of expertise: leading the control center operations, vegetation management, asset management, and technical services teams within Transmission to continue safe and reliable ongoing operations.
Nominate
I am a proud alumna of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. I also hold a Master of Business Administration degree from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. I am a licensed Professional Civil Engineer in both Illinois and Missouri. I’m a graduate of the CORO Women in Leadership program, was designated a Rising Star for the 2016 Women’s Energy Summit and was included in the 2022 Under 40 list from Public Utilities Fortnightly. I’m proud to serve on the advisory board to engage in the continued success of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Areas of expertise: CEC is a womanowned civil engineering and surveying firm. Since 1998, we have been designing roads and bridges for IDOT, county highway departments and municipalities. We perform the related surveying and engineering tasks from the feasibility stage all the way through construction. Related tasks include surveying, hydraulic studies, environmental studies, project reports, bridge inspections and condition reports, bridge design and plans, roadway plans, construction staking, construction inspection, right-of-way plats and negotiations.
As an undergraduate at UIUC, I was part of the first group of students who completed the Hoeft Technology & Management Program in its pilot season. I have no doubt that my education and experiences at the University prepared me for a very fulfilling civil engineering career. As a CEEAA Board Member, I am excited about the different opportunities to give back and to support this great school and the engineering profession. Go Illini!!
Vice President, Aviation Business Development Director Hanson Professional Services Inc. Springfield, Ill.
Areas of expertise: Transportation Engineering Consulting, Aviation and Highway Design/Construction and Business Development
Having recently led one of the largest aviation development projects completed in the U.S. over the last 15 years, I wanted to bring real-world experience and business perspectives that I could share with the CEE Department and give back to CEE students.
This perspective has significantly evolved over the last 20 years – where engineers are not only responsible for technical aspects of projects, but now they are expected to be complete project managers with a full understanding of project financials and accounting; lead large diverse teams of people; be good communicators and writers; as well as manage and further develop relationships with both existing and prospective clients. It is this real-world experience that I would like to share and give back – an experience that has relied heavily on business acumen and interpersonal skills all rooted in a UIUC CEE technical engineering foundation that is second to none.
Learn more
a colleague for an alumni award, check out upcoming events and more:
Areas of expertise: railroad yard design, construction inspection, and project management; highway design and project management for various local and state roadway projects
I am invested with the U of I CEE department, where I earned both my BS and MS degrees. I am excited to join the Board because I want to give back to the department and work to keep the school’s track record of ranking high nationally. My goal while on the board is to make a stronger connection between the alumni association and alumni in the St. Louis area.
Areas of expertise: Water/Wastewater
My father graduated from the department, and I have grown up and still live in Champaign. I feel a very strong commitment to preserving the great history of the department as well as progressing it to meet the needs of a changing world. Through my involvement with the Association, I intend on building relationships with the department leadership and faculty to increase CEEAA’s interaction with the department, determine our shared pursuits and how we can assist each other and achieve our common goals.
Areas of expertise: Roadway and airfield pavement testing, analysis, rehabilitation design and management
My years at Illinois were incredibly rewarding and set me up for what’s become an exciting and challenging career in Civil Engineering. I’d like to start supporting the next generation of Illini and help advance the mission of the department in any way that I can. I truly love collaborating with other professionals, and I look forward to serving on many CEEAA committees and successfully executing assignments with similarly focused alumni.
Areas of expertise: Geotechnical, Construction Management
I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and was one of those "out-of-staters." I've called Illinois home ever since, though. I live in the Chicago suburbs with my wife – also an Illini engineer (Chemical) – and two kids. I enjoy being on the CEEAA Board because it's a great way to give back to the department and allows me to keep a connection to U of I.
Areas of expertise: Heavy and Highway Design/Transportation/DesignBuild and Alternative Delivery Procurement
My education from U of I is the foundation of the wonderful life and the career I enjoy. I joined the board because being part of the Board provides a vehicle to give back to something that has given me so much in life and to be with a group of people that share that appreciation, pride and passion for the U of I CEE Department.
Areas of expertise: Water Infrastructure
I am so thankful for the education I received at U of I that prepared me not just for a career in engineering, but in how to help transform the communities we live in. I am proud to be an alum and joined the Alumni Board to help ensure that future engineers receive a similar world-class experience that prepares them to meet the evolving needs of communities today and the future.
Areas of expertise: Heavy/Highway
Construction
Project Executive with over 28 years of experience in heavy/highway construction. A great honor working with the board to keep UIUC the best civil and environmental engineering program in the world.
Areas of expertise: Project and Program Management, Leadership and Teaming, Solving Highly Technical Challenges
I am very excited about my current work focus on sustainability and the challenge of reaching net zero carbon. I love walks with my 12-year -old dog! I joined the board at the suggestion of a friend/coworker who was a former CEEAA Board President, to meet others across the field and mentor young engineers.
Area of expertise: Calculating damages and determining reasons for delay in construction disputes (expert witness)
I joined the Board to give back to the University of Illinois and the CEE Department for providing me a strong background in Construction Management and Engineering. The education I received allowed me to have the necessary skill set for my career.
Areas of Expertise: Tunnels, Underground Structures, Geotechnical
The University of Illinois has been the Gold Standard in the Underground Industry. My education prepared me to succeed; the reputation of the faculty and the University helped me to network and obtain great postings early in my career.
I joined the CEAA Board to engage with fellow alums, faculty and students so that, in some small way, I can give back to the University and help assure that current and future students enjoy the same benefits.
Prior to joining PCI, Bob served as President and CEO of the Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute for nine years and as Executive Director of the Michigan Concrete Paving Association for 10 years. He was previously Engineering Editor with the Aberdeen Group, publisher of Concrete Construction magazine and sponsor of the World of Concrete trade shows.
He also spent five years with the American Concrete Pavement Association as Director of Engineering Design and Director of Market Development – Airports/Training where he was involved with the production of technical literature and presentation materials on concrete pavement design, construction and rehabilitation.
Over the years, the CEE Alumni Association Board of Directors has led a number of joint philanthropic initiatives with board members past and present to benefit the department. Some recent efforts included sponsoring a conference room in the M.T. Geoffrey Yeh Student Center; funding a student collaboration area in the new Civil and Environmental Engineering Building; and establishing a scholarship fund in 2013 to mark the 50th anniversary of the alumni association. The department is deeply grateful for the continual generosity of the Board.
Your gifts have a lasting impact on our students —both during their school years and beyond.
Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) are paid positions that give students the opportunity to actively participate in research and work closely with faculty. Your gifts help support these hands-on research experiences, which not only enhance a student’s education but also –as these alumni share – prepare them for the future.
Rohini Singh Gupta BS 2017 PhD Candidate, Cornell UniversityWhat year(s) did you participate in undergraduate research?
I participated in the REU program from my sophomore through senior year.
With which professor did you work, and what were you studying?
I worked as an undergraduate research assistant with Dr. Ashlynn S. Stillwell and graduate student Dr. Lauren H. Logan. My research project broadly focused on the energy-water nexus: a field that characterizes the relationship between the energy and water sectors. Research areas in this field include analyzing energy requirements for water systems and understanding the dependence of the energy sector on water resources. Specifically, I worked to quantify the effects of thermal effluent from open-cycle cooled coalfired power plants on the aquatic ecosystem of the Ohio River. Using 50 years of empirical data, I generated mathematical models that predicted how the presence of different species of fish was affected by water temperature. These models were subsequently used to perform an economic assessment to quantify the tradeoffs between electricity generation and the loss in biodiversity associated with thermal pollution. We ultimately published a journal article on this work
What were the benefits of participating in research as an undergrad?
The three years in Stillwell Research Group were pivotal in my development as an engineer and researcher. I gained expertise in programming, wrote tech-
nical documents and journal papers, and presented my work at key conferences in our field. Dr. Stillwell’s focus on providing undergraduate students the opportunity to present at conferences was an experience that, in hindsight, I now see to be incredibly unique. At these conferences, I gained exposure as a young and up-andcoming researcher and had the ability to network with top academics in my field. It was through these opportunities that I secured an internship at the prestigious National Renewable Energy Lab. Many of the researchers that I met through the REU program, conferences, and the internship at NREL are still friends, mentors and key collaborators today.
My positive experiences and successful collaborations within Stillwell Research Group greatly strengthened my desire to pursue a Ph.D. to continue research at a higher level. It became very clear that the experiences and skills gained through the REU program made me a competitive candidate when applying to graduate school. I ultimately decided to come to Cornell University to pursue my Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering, where I have remained since 2017. I used the skills that I had learned in the group
to structure well-posed research project proposals which helped me win a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Many of the communities that I am involved in (Multisector Dynamics and Integrated Multisector, Multiscale Modeling through the Department of Energy) are comprised of people who I have met through my REU experiences.
I attribute much of my success to the wealth of experiences afforded to me by Dr. Stillwell and the REU program. During my undergrad, the Stillwell Research Group became like a second family to me and I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to work with them and to continue to collaborate on multiple levels. The support that I have received from the group has helped me navigate struggles faced by all early-career researchers. I sincerely hope that the REU program remains active and thriving in order to afford the same opportunities that I have received to current CEE undergrads.
“Undergraduate research brought out the curious side of me and shaped me into the life-long learner and advocate of the water industry that I am today.”
BS 2013, MS 2015
What year(s) did you participate in undergraduate research?
I participated in an exciting, motivating, challenging and life-changing experience within the National Science Foundation’s Center of Advanced Materials for Purification of Water with Systems (WaterCAMPWS) REU program during my junior and senior years.
During my junior year, I worked with my graduate student mentor, Sahid Rosado, to investigate the efficacy of reactive oxygen species produced by six dissolved organic matter to inactivate MS2 bacteriophage under simulated sunlight. Sahid treated me like a graduate student, expecting and teaching me to think deeply about the research and its applicability to drinking water treatment. The work we undertook introduced me to foundational science and taught me the discipline I need to perform rigorous work in the lab, both of which prepared me for and committed me to graduate level research.
This work also led to the opportunity to collaborate with Professor Karina Gin at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Sahid and I spent Summer 2012 at NUS investigating solar inactivation of viruses using Singaporean natural waters. We compared the findings with the results we obtained from the synthetic waters we experimented with at UIUC, and saw similar trends overall, proving that our methods can improve water quality when applied in the field. Beyond the technical aspects of research, I have experience communicating my work through presentations at conferences, such as the 2012 Singapore International Water Week, the
2012 UNC Water and Health Conference, and the 2012 EPA National Sustainable Design Expo. Furthermore, I am a coauthor of a manuscript for this work that was accepted by Water Research in May 2013. Through this research, I gained experience in designing experiments, analyzing data, collaborating with international partners, and co-authoring a paper for publication.
During my senior year, I began investigating the mechanisms of virus removal in biosand filters (BSFs), which is a pointof-use drinking water treatment technology that has been implemented in communities around the world. I constructed a BSF with seven ports inserted down the length of the filter used to collect samples to determine MS2 bacteriophage removal as a function of depth of the filter, residence time, sand media aging, and flow rate. This research led to collaboration with the Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology (CAWST), the international organization that designs BSFs. In Summer 2012, I helped to edit a proposal with CAWST that won the 2012 Reed Elsevier Environmental Challenge grant, which was used to implement BSFs in communities in Nepal to decrease the burden of non-potable drinking water on community members.
What were the benefits of participating in research as an undergrad?
Beyond what I shared above about technical and non-technical skills that I gained, one benefit is that I met lifelong mentors and friends who I still keep in
touch with today, even though we are spread out throughout the world. Rae Clementz, the Education Programs Coordinator of WaterCAMPWS, helped me to build self-confidence, create and achieve SMART goals, stay organized, and never give up. My graduate student mentors and I became friends, and they inspired me to work hard, stay curious and pay it forward by mentoring other undergraduate students as well. Undergraduate research brought out the curious side of me and shaped me into the life-long learner and advocate of the water industry that I am today.
Did it influence your desire to pursue more education or the career you chose?
I stayed at UIUC for my graduate studies to continue my proposed work to improve the BSF design by exploring the efficiencies and mechanisms of reduction of different viruses in BSFs, which was awarded an NSF GRFP Fellowship in April 2014.
After my masters, I started working as a consulting engineer in the water industry. Although I am not doing research anymore, I utilize a myriad of skills I developed from my undergraduate (and graduate) research experience including critical thinking, technical writing and presenting, being resourceful, mentoring, and project, people and time management.
BS 2018, MS 2019
Senior Civil Engineer, DuPage County Stormwater ManagementWhat year(s) did you participate in undergraduate research?
Senior year
With which professor did you work, and what were you studying?
Dr. Ashlynn Stillwell – The Energy-Water nexus
What were the benefits of participating in research as an undergrad?
I got to work with graduate students who had a lot of knowledge and various types of experiences within our field, which I otherwise would not have been exposed to in my classes. I also made meaningful connections with my professors and other students which helped me attain my master’s degree and later my job.
Did it influence your desire to pursue more education or the career you chose?
I enjoyed collaborating with other students on research that we shared an inter-
est in, which ultimately led to my decision to go for a master’s degree. Although my current job does not exactly involve the kinds of research I participated in, the experience I gained from using different programs such as GIS as well as how to effectively work with others ended up being very beneficial for my current position.
Anything else you’d like to add? Even if you don’t think you want to pursue a graduate degree or career in a specific research area, I would still recommend joining a research group for the collaborative experience and connections you make.
“I also made meaningful connections with my professors and other students which helped me attain my master’s degree and later my job.“ YEAR IN
$10,600 GIFTS TO SUPPORT REU PROGRAM (FY 22)
MS 2018, PhD 2021 Research Scientist, Meta Inc.
What year(s) did you participate in undergraduate research?
Participated in Senior year.
With which professor did you work, and what were you studying?
Worked with Professor Yanfeng Ouyang, worked in evaluating the relationship between traffic maintenance plan and traffic delay.
What were the benefits of participating in research as an undergrad?
Get the chance to work with professors on research project, joined the group meeting and explore possible research opportunities.
Did it influence your desire to pursue more education or the career you chose?
Yes, pursue a Ph.D. degree after that.
14 ACTIVE REU PROJECTS FOR FALL 2022 SEMESTER
23* STUDENTS WHO PARTICIPATED IN REU PROJECTS (AY 2021-2022)
$1,500 AVERAGE COST TO FUND AN REU PROJECT FOR ONE SEMESTER
Junior
Project: Characterizing baseline soil behavior with select polymer additives
Faculty: Scott Olson
“The topic of the research I am doing with Professor Olson is on testing how certain polymers affect the behavior of a soil. The work I do is discovering the index properties of soil samples before polymers are added to the samples. Not every sample is going to behave how we are expecting it to behave. We preform qualitative tests on a small portion of the sample before we perform actual lab tests. This saves us time in the long run because we aren’t curating large lab experiments for samples that don’t have the correct behavior. The qualitative tests include testing its strength on a 2 cm cube and testing the samples behavior when exposed to water. The samples that pass the qualitative tests will then be considered for the full lab tests to determine the behavior of the soils.”
Lydia Aigbokhai
Senior
Project: GPR-Based Near RealTime Monitoring of Asphalt
Concrete Density
Faculty: Imad Al-Qadi
“I am working with ground penetrating radar (GPR), which can accurately predict density in asphalt concrete (AC). GPR works by sending a tiny pulse of energy into a material and then recording the strength and the time required for the return of a reflected signal. I am currently working alongside Lama Abufares, a graduate student, to develop a user-friendly tool suite to manage near-real-time density monitoring during the AC pavement compaction process.”
There are 14 REU projects underway this semester, providing students the opportunity to work closely with professors on topics ranging from large excavations in urban environments to the impact of climate change on Lake Michigan shoreline rocks. As part of the REU project, a student must write a short report that describes their work and findings.
Arannya Roy
Sophomore
Project: Characterization of an experimental stream table for ecomorphodynamics research Faculty: Rafael Tinoco
“Currently, I am working on characterizing the ecomorphodynamic properties of the Emriver EM4 stream table. Most of the work is focused on characterizing the waves produced by the wavemaker that comes with the table; by varying the input settings of the table such as paddle speed, paddle angle, water depth and time delay, I am trying to test achievable ranges of wave heights, orbital velocities and frequencies of the waves produced. I am trying to produce models that allow one to know which input parameters to use to create a wave with a certain amplitude, frequency and/or orbital velocity. The overarching goal is to examine the extent to which the models show that waves and currents produced in this stream table model natural waves and currents in water bodies in real life.”
Abby Hutter SeniorProject: Future Underground Landscape – Learning from Large Excavations in a Complex Urban Environment Faculty: Youssef Hashash
“My research with Professor Hashash has involved studying excavation performance from the extensive field monitoring data of the Los Angeles Metro expansion. Induced ground response to braced excavations and Tunnel Boring Machine operation is evaluated by our research group using the instrumentation data collected during construction. The outcome of this research is improved empirical models for estimating induced ground displacements in support of the design of future underground space development.”
BS 2021
Material, Process, Delivery Engineer, Procter & GambleWhat scholarships did you receive as an undergraduate?
• Provost Scholarship
• Engineering Visionary Scholarship
• George L. Farnsworth Jr. Scholarship
• Harold and Ruth Hayward Scholarship
• Sargent and Lundy Engineering Scholarship
• IPENG Travel Scholarship
• I4I Study Abroad Scholarship
• Koch Scholarship in CEE
• Duane Edward and Phyllis Ann Erickson Memorial Scholarship in CEE
• Verne Rathsam Scholarship
How did receiving a scholarship as an admitted student affect your decision to attend the University of Illinois?
Receiving a scholarship greatly affected my decision to attend the University of Illinois. It greatly reduced the financial strain on my family including my two siblings who also chose to attend the University of Illinois. The scholarships made my college decision simple. Being able to attend a top-ranked program at a university with ample opportunities and resources for women in engineering with financial assistance was a no-brainer! I’m grateful that the scholarships I received helped me make one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Did receiving the scholarship affect your success in any way – either in school or after?
Receiving the scholarship allowed me to pursue all of the opportunities that were presented to me and bring those experiences back to better the UIUC community.
Due to my scholarships, I had the finan-
Scholarships ease the financial concerns of our students and allow them to focus on their education. Scholarships for incoming first-year students are of particular importance, as they can be the deciding factor for someone trying to decide which college to attend. These recruiting scholarships are also a good investment: 94% of our firstyear students come back for a second year.
cial means to volunteer with the international organization GIVE during the summer after my freshman year. I was able to volunteer in the Mueang Khong region of Thailand where I taught English to young students and worked on a permaculture site. I brought this passion for community service back to UIUC where I served as a chair on the Society of Women Engineers Community Service Committee for three years.
Additionally, my scholarships provided me with the financial means to participate in the Hoeft Technology & Management Program International Business Plan Competition in São Paulo, Brazil with the theme Integrating People with Disabilities. This opportunity allowed me to take a condensed course on accessibility at the UIUC Disability Resources & Education Services center. I also learned onsite in Brazil through visits to the Rio Paralympic Training Center and the São Paulo Rehabilitation Center as well as a visit from the Rosas de Ouro Samba school for those with disabilities. These experiences provided inspiration for my team of students from Hong Kong, Germany and Brazil to design a product that better integrates those with disabilities. This experience allowed me to bring my knowledge of accessible design to my Technology & Management course (TMGT 366) Product Design and Development. I also coordinated a new event within the UIUC Society of Women Engineers to teach members about disability & accessible design.
Overall, these scholarships provided me the ability to undertake all of the opportunities that were presented to me and use them to better myself and the community around me.
$145,773 GIFTS TO CEE SCHOLARSHIP FUNDS (FY22)
65 DONORS TO CEE SCHOLARSHIP FUNDS (FY22)
94% RETENTION RATE (FIRST YEAR STUDENTS WHO RETURN FOR A SECOND YEAR)
“The scholarships that UIUC and my donors endowed to me these past four years practically guaranteed my acceptance of admission.”
Robert Wiggins BS 2022 Graduate student Research Assistant, Illinois Center for Transportation
What scholarships did you receive as an undergraduate?
• Illinois Engineering Premier Scholarship
• Dotson Visionary Scholarship
• Chancellor’s Scholarship
• IAPA Fletcher A. Gourley, Leonard Southwell & Roger Capps Memorial Scholarship
• CEE Bates and Rogers Scholarship
• CEE Jacobs Engineering Transportation Scholarship
• CEE Geotechnical Gift Scholarship
• CEE Illinois Association of County Engineers Scholarship
How did receiving a scholarship as an admitted student affect your decision to attend the University of Illinois?
Although UIUC was a top choice for me,
due to the school’s world-renowned civil engineering program, the scholarships that UIUC and my donors endowed to me these past four years practically guaranteed my acceptance of admission, as UIUC also became my most affordable option.
Did receiving the scholarship affect your success in any way – either in school or after?
My scholarships allowed me to focus more of my time on my academic career, as well as my involvement in research and student organizations, rather than financial responsibilities (although these were still considered, of course).
Anything else you’d like to add? Just want to shout out the ASCE student chapter at UIUC for being the coolest student organization on campus!
Lauren Excell BS 2020 Ph.D. student, Stanford UniversityWhat scholarships did you receive as an undergraduate?
I received the Engineering Visionary Scholarship, the Class of 1943 Leadership Award, CEE Alumni Association Undergraduate Service Leadership Scholarship and the Ira O. Baker Award. I was also a Chancellor’s Scholar, a James Scholar, and on the Dean’s List.
How did receiving a scholarship as an admitted student affect your decision to attend the University of Illinois?
Receiving scholarships from Illinois made me feel like I was already believed in by the school, and it made my decision to attend much easier from a financial and personal perspective. As a woman in engineering, it can be really intimidating to join a male-dominated field. Knowing that I was recognized for my intelligence and hard work made me feel like I was capable of excelling in engineering.
Did receiving the scholarship affect your success in any way – either in school or after?
The scholarships let me focus on my studies rather than worrying about how I was going to be funded.
WITH GRATITUDE:
Graduate fellowships are an important resource for the students who receive them, but also the department: named fellowships expand the Ph.D. capacity of the department which improves our rankings; they afford the student flexibility to pursue their own areas of research; and they afford prestige to the student which can help with recruitment.
CEE at Illinois is very grateful for the generosity of our alumni, friends and companies who so generously support our graduate students through fellowship and award funds. Here, new and continuing fellowships awarded by the department for Fall 2022:
Alfredo and Myrtle Mae Ang Fellowship
Ricardo Dorado
Burton and Erma Lewis Graduate Fellowship
Amr Ibrahim
Farhad Kamarei
Shashwot Paudel
Lauren Schissler
Canadian National Fellowship in Railroad Engineering
Negin Shafie Zadeh Arjomandi
Sadaf Shafie Zadeh Arjomandi
Ivan Racheff Fellowship
Maria Florencia Bianco
Saumitra Rai
Arthur Schmidt
John W. Page Fellowship
Omar Almasry
Maidment Fellowship in Hydrosystems Engineering
Emma Golub
Yuanzhe Wang
Peter K. Dai Graduate Fellowship
Alexander Chen
Rourou Ji
Youngdae Kim
Hsu Shun-Hsiang
Haonan Sun
Carine Tanissa
Ravindar K. and Kavita Kinra Fellowship
Krishna Polavaram
Karthik Pattaje
Harsh Shah
Ishank Singh
RCC Pavement Council Fellowship
Omar Jadallah
Jordan Ouellet
Walter E. Deuchler Environmental Engineering Fellowship
Erin Emme
Endowed Fellowships:
The cost to fully fund a graduate student for one year of study is approximately $30,000. An endowment of $750,000 is required to provide sufficient income to continually award a fellowship in that amount. Most fellowships currently awarded by CEE are partial fellowships.
Giving Opportunities:
If you would like to learn more about how to support any of the initiatives described on these pages, or to hear about other giving opportunities, please contact:
Grainger College of Engineering
Office of Advancement
Steve Hall (217) 300-7830
stevhall@illinois.edu
Jonathan Hill (217) 265-6567
jonahill@illinois.edu
Ricardo Dorado
MS 2022
Ph.D.
student“Receiving the Ang Fellowship means not only a great honor for me, but also a great support to start my doctoral studies at Illinois.”
To make a gift to CEE now, visit cee.illinois.edu/give or scan this QR code on your device.
The advance may help seismologists redefine rate-and-state laws to determine where stress is building up in the crust – and give clues to where and when future earthquakes may occur
By lois yoksouliAnUsing single calcite crystals with varying surface roughness allows engineers to simplify the complex physics that describes fault movement. In a new study, CEE researchers show how this simplification may lead to better earthquake prediction.
Scientists describe fault behavior using models based on observational studies that account for the frictional coefficients of rocks and minerals. These “rate-and-state” equations calculate the fault strength, which has implications for earthquake strength and frequency. However, applying these empirical models to earthquake prediction is not practical because of the number of unique variables to be considered for each fault, including the effect of water.
The study, led by CEE professor Rosa Espinosa- Marzal, looks at the relationship between friction and the surface roughness of calcite – one of the most common rock-forming minerals in Earth’s crust – to formulate a more theoretical approach to defining rate-and-state laws.
The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Our goal is to examine the nanoscale processes that may trigger fault movement,” said Binxin Fu (MS 19), a Ph.D. student and the first author of the study. “The processes we investigate at the nanoscale are less complex than macroscale processes. Because of this, we aim to use microscopic observations to bridge the gap between the nanoscale and mac-
roscale worlds to describe fault behavior using less complexity.”
The roughness of a mineral crystal depends primarily on its atomic structure. However, the researchers said the rocks in contact zones are scraped, dissolved and annealed as they rub past each other, also affecting their nanoscale texture.
To test how nanoscale mineral roughness can affect fault behavior, the team prepared atomically smooth and rough calcite crystals in dry and wet environments to simulate dry rocks and those containing pore water. Atomic force microscopy measured friction by dragging a tiny, pressure-mounted silicon tip across different crystal surfaces exposed to simulated fault zone conditions: wet surface and smooth calcite; wet surface and rough calcite; dry surface and smooth calcite; and dry surface with rough calcite.
“Friction can increase or decrease with sliding velocity depending on the mineral
types and the environment,” EspinosaMarzal said. “We found that in calcite, friction typically increases with sliding rate along rougher mineral surfaces – and even more in the presence of water. By using data from such a common mineral type and a limited number of contact scenarios, we reduce the analysis’s complexity and provide a fundamental understanding of the rate-and-state equations.”
The team compared its experimental results to studies from natural settings with calcite-containing rock at shallow crustal levels.
“Our results agree with a recent study showing that water lowers the fault strength compared with dry conditions,” Espinosa-Marzal said. ”Our findings are also consistent with another study showing that low-frequency earthquakes tend to occur along wet faults, suggesting that decreased friction – caused by water – may be a mechanism for slow earthquakes in some environments.”
This advance may help seismologists redefine rate-and-state laws to determine where stress is building up in the crust –and give clues to where and when future earthquakes may occur.
The team acknowledges that there are still many other factors to consider, including temperature and the influence of other common crustal minerals such as quartz and mica. The researchers plan to incorporate these variables into future models.
The National Science Foundation supported this study. i
For many years, U.S. News & World Report has ranked CEE at Illinois among the top schools for undergraduate environmental engineering. Even so, up until now the department has offered only a concentration in environmental engineering within its undergraduate program, with all graduates earning bachelor’s degrees in civil engineering. Now a new undergraduate degree program is in the works that will enable students to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering.
The B.S. in Environmental Engineering degree program (B.S. in EnvE), which just received final approval in November by the Illinois Board of Higher Education, will provide rigorous and focused training at the intersection of the natural sciences and engineering fundamentals. The degree program is expected to be completed in eight semesters of full-time study.
The program will be unique in its integration of atmospheric sciences with infrastructure planning and design; the development of computational skills including mathematical techniques to work with environmental and temporal datasets; the incorporation of engineering design experience distributed across the curriculum; and the provision of concentration areas and coursework in emerging areas of critical importance in the 21st century. Students will gain core knowledge in math, science and engineering and select a primary concentration within the B.S. EnvE program from among the following five alternatives: Public Health Engineering; One Water; Energy and Environmental Sustainability; Climate and Environmental Sustainability; and Water Systems and Sustainability.
“Students receiving a B.S. degree in EnvE will be uniquely trained in environmental engineering and the natural
sciences, and will be skilled in computational tools, climate adaptation and mitigation, and the design and advancement of environmental infrastructure and technologies,” said Professor John Popovics, Associate Head for Undergraduate Studies. “They will also gain the analytical and computational skills necessary for the analysis, planning and design of environmental infrastructure and technologies to meet the rapidly evolving needs of communities and to guide societal development along more sustainable trajectories.
“Graduates will thus be well positioned to pursue professional degree programs in engineering as well as diverse programs related to environmental policy, public health and the natural sciences. They will also be equally prepared to enter industry as environmental or water resources engineers, or to pursue a diversity of emerging careers related to sustainable design and sustainable development.”
The first graduates of the new program are expected in spring 2025. Cur-
rent undergraduates may transfer into the program starting in fall 2023, and new incoming students may apply to begin in fall 2024. i
The U.S. Climate Alliance aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least 26% and 50% by 2025 and 2030, respectively.
To help meet this goal, Eleftheria Kontou, CEE assistant professor, will focus on transport electrification – the process of replacing fossil fuel-burning technologies, such as cars, with electric ones.
The electrification of personal vehicles is vital to achieving climate goals, as transportation generated 27% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“It (the transportation sector) is almost exclusively based on fossil fuels in terms of powering the majority of the
vehicles that we see, particularly on the ground,” Kontou said. “There are a lot of opportunities for diversifying its power sources, which has a lot of implications for improving energy efficiency, reducing environmental impacts and contributing towards energy security.”
Two of the largest barriers for adopting electric vehicles – high price tags and lack of charging stations – have been proven to influence drivers’ willingness to go electric.
In a recently published study, Kontou aims to allay these issues by helping policymakers optimize monetary incentives for buying electric vehicles with investments in charging infrastructure.
Kontou and Yen-Chu Wu (MS 22),
then a CEE master’s student, developed an optimization model to help drive the adoption of electric vehicles and to meet emission-reduction targets over different long-term periods.
“This type of model helps us come up with trajectories of how rebates and charging infrastructure need to be rolled out so that we can meet emission-reduction targets that are set by policymakers,” Kontou said. “It also tracks how consumers may make decisions to transition (to electric vehicles) over this time.”
Based on their model’s trajectories, Kontou and Wu recommend that policymakers provide monetary incentives for electric vehicles first before making significant investment in charging infrastructure.
“If a technology is very new, people are naturally hesitant to adopt it because they don’t know that it is reliable,” Kontou said. “But as more and more people adopt, people feel more confident regarding adopting the new technology.”
They also recommend building up reliable charging infrastructure gradually in the first 15 years of a 30-year planning period.
Kontou and Yen-Chu Wu, a CEE master’s student, developed an optimization model to help drive the adoption of electric vehicles and to meet emissionreduction targets over different long-term periods.Eleftheria Kontou
quality manager, will apply the same technique to the state of Illinois in an IDOT-ICT project, “R27-236: Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Plan in Illinois.”
Kontou will use her experience at the national level to help IDOT build similar trajectory models for the adoption of electric vehicles in Illinois, which seeks to meet the goals of the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act and have one million electric vehicles on the road by 2030.
Her approach will allow the state to establish the number of charging stations it will need to support electric vehicles and to estimate the adoption level of electric vehicles it will need by 2030 to achieve its emission-reduction goals.
Kontou and Schmidt also created an electric vehicle steering committee with individuals from industry, public agencies in Illinois, charging infrastructure providers and electric vehicle auto manufacturers.
After their statewide analysis, Kontou aims to break down the demand for electric vehicles by clusters of regions with similar adoption levels, such as urban and rural, to more realistically model the existing and future transitions to electric vehicles.
The IDOT-ICT project will conclude in December 2022. i
As emergency coordinators across the U.S. prepare for the upcoming hurricane season, they are busy planning evacuation routes. Currently, these plans don’t anticipate the needs of people driving electric vehicles, which have shorter driving ranges than gas vehicles and require recharging at stations with charging ports. CEE assistant professor Eleftheria Kontou spoke with UIUC News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian about this issue and her newly published study.
What issues can we expect to see from the increased number of electric vehicles on the current evacuation routes?
Due to limited driving range and sparse charging infrastructure networks, electric vehicles are more susceptible to being stranded during evacuations. The existing evacuation routes do not account for the frequent charging needs and the long charging times of electric vehicles, posing barriers to evacuation and reaching shelters.
Electric vehicles may need to be rerouted to access charging stations and deviate from the shortest path to safety, increasing the evacuation time. Charging is time-consuming and also increases the time to reach shelters during evacuations. Due to the limited number of charging stations and ports, long queues are expected to form, leaving electric vehicle drivers more exposed to danger. Additionally, power outages can render both gasoline and charging stations inoperable, challenging the ability of drivers to escape other hazards like wildfires and flooding.
What changes or improvements can be made to the current infrastructure to address this problem?
Because the current charging infrastructure was built to suit the day-to-day needs of electric vehicle travelers, emergency coordinators will need to reevaluate its capacity to manage the peak demands of a natural catastrophe-related
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evacuation. For example, designating specific evacuation routes for electric vehicles will provide reliable access to charging while reducing total evacuation times and charging station crowding.
What are some of the steps your research group is taking to address this issue?
We have developed a model that designates different evacuation routes for gasoline, electric and other alternativefuel vehicles, which can be followed concurrently by these vehicle technologies during evacuations. We recommend that evacuation coordinators design routes that minimize the system’s evacuation time, are seamless in that they eliminate forking and confusion, apply traffic contraflow principles so that each road in the network can be used at maximum capacity, and provide reliable access to charging and refueling infrastructure.
What can emergency coordinators and electric vehicle drivers do right now, while these new routes are being developed, to ensure safety during an evacuation?
We suggest that evacuation coordinators design routes to shelters and safe zones that pass through charging and refueling stations. They also should develop maps and information campaigns to communicate their preemptive and emergency evacuation plans with alternative fuel-vehicle drivers. Also, emergency planners should collaborate closely with charging infrastructure providers and utilities to identify locations that are critical for charging during evacuations.
Electric vehicle drivers need to review existing evacuation routes and assess their charging options in a hypothetical evacuation scenario. If it is infeasible to reach safety with their electric vehicles, they might need to coordinate with neighbors or use a secondary vehicle with a larger driving range. i
With Hurricane Ian on the way, CEE assistant professor Frank Lombardo answered a few questions about hurricane winds and the damage they cause. Lombardo’s expertise is in wind engineering, extreme wind characterization, bluff body aerodynamics, resilience and structural damage.
What type of wind damage can a community expect when a Category 1 hurricane hits versus a Category 5?
For a Category 1 hurricane you might expect scattered damage in a community, generally minor roof damage, maybe sporadic power outages due to failed power lines. For a Category 5 a community may expect widespread and significant wind damage, including structural damage to the roof and walls. Power may be out for weeks. If in an area prone to storm surge (similar to some areas affected by Ian) a Category 5 can generate significant water-induced forces on the structure that can be much more dangerous than the wind.
What type of infrastructure changes could help mitigate the impacts of these types of storms?
Considering the wind only there are number of simple things one can do for houses. One is to harden your garage door. We found from research
that homes that suffered damage to the garage door suffered a disproportionate amount of roof damage. This is due to internal pressure that is “let in” if the garage door fails. We as a society should give some thought about where we build and the risks associated with it.
Is there a difference in the type of wind damage caused by hurricanes vs tornadoes?
In short, yes. The wind fields are completely different in scale, duration and character. Tornado characteristics like large pressure drops over a small area and the vertical component of the wind can serve to create more damage for a specific wind speed. Although it hasn’t been quantified, debris seems to be more significant in tornadoes all other things being equal. Hurricane damage given its spatial scale tends to be more widespread and has wider-ranging impacts downstream (e.g., power outages).
Has climate change played a role in the frequency or severity of hurricanes hitting the U.S.?
Yes. And future projections suggest the frequency and severity will continue to increase.
What are some of the projects your research group is working on, related to the impact of high winds on personal property and public infrastructure?
We work on both ends of the research spectrum when considering high winds. There is a significant lack of surface wind data in all extreme wind events. In hurricanes for example, most official weather stations lose power and do not record the highest winds. Understanding the rela-
tionship between wind speed and damage is critical to mitigate the damage, and so we deploy our instruments before these events make landfall to collect vital wind data. In the days leading up to Ian, for example, several of the students from my research lab traveled to Florida to deploy two wind measurement towers and approximately 40 pressure sensors. When it is safe to return, they’ll collect the equipment and we'll begin analyzing the data to improve characterization of Ian's wind field and to correlate wind speeds with associated damage. Learning from the damage is also critical to mitigation so after the event we assess the damage to the built and natural environment.
In this webinar recorded September 29, 2022, CEE professor Oscar Lopez-Pamies talked about his recent work aimed at creating a new class of materials with the potential to enable new technologies. From designing the microstructure of materials so they have greater crack resistance, to adding liquid inclusions to solids to create materials with fascinating behaviors (like “cloaking”), Lopez-Pamies shared his cutting-edge research and the exciting applications for which these new classes of materials might be used.
Watch the webinar at this link:
By AlP BAlCAy & ABBAs k AChWAll A MEntorshiP CoMMittEE o vErviEW
The Young Engineers Division (YED) of the CEE Alumni Association Board of Directors (CEEAA) serves the department’s most recently graduated alumni with events, an e-newsletter and other programming. The YED Mentoring Committee provides a one-onone mentoring program by and for CEE alumni who have graduated within the last five years.
Participants are paired with more experienced CEE alumni based on how well the experience and skills of the mentor match the goals and needs of the mentee. Mentees are encouraged to reach out to their mentors periodically during the one-year mentorship cycle.
Established in 2020, the Mentorship Program now has an enrollment of approximately 85 mentees and 90 mentors. The next round of the Mentorship Program is planned to start in Spring 2023, and applications will open in January 2023. The committee encourages more CEE alumni to apply and be part of the CEE fam-ILL-y through a mentorship provided by the CEEAA. i
The mentorship program is limited to alumni who have graduated within the last five years – both for mentors and mentees. The YED publishes the sign-up link during its enrollment period in January or February of each year. The link is included in the e-newsletter published by the Young Engineers Division. If you are a young alum, ensure that you get the e-newsletter, please update your contact information on the alumni page of the CEE website. For more information on YED events and other programming, please follow the QR code to the YED pages on the CEE website.
“I’ve had the pleasure of mentoring two young professionals individually through the CEE YED Mentoring Program. As a young professional myself, this was a unique opportunity where I was able to provide mentorship, while also learning a lot from both mentees throughout our conversations. Being able to connect as young professionals and CEE alumni helped to build rapport quickly. Both of my mentees came prepared with what they wanted to discuss for our calls, which were productive and enjoyable. During my time at UIUC, I was fortunate to have had multiple fantastic mentors, both informally and through formal programs, who helped to shape me into the person and engineer I am today. I believe the CEE YED Mentoring Program is a great way for CEE alumni to connect, share experiences and build up the next generation of excellent and forwardthinking civil engineers in our industry.”
“Being able to connect as young professionals and CEE alumni helped to build rapport quickly.”
“Ever since leaving Champaign and ending what I can only describe as an incredible experience at Illinois, I have always been interested in ways to give back, both to the school and my fellow alumni. That was just part of the reason I have been so thrilled to be a part of the CEEAA YED Mentorship Program. My mentee Aaron and I have met up monthly since we started with the program in May, and it has been a great experience for both of us. Though we have different roles, we have both benefited and learned a lot from each other through being active in projects, and I have personally really enjoyed sharing my experiences and career learnings with a fellow alum. Along the way we have had a chance to check out some great spots around Chicago and even made it up to Wrigley Field for a Cubs game. The program has been a very meaningful experience for me and is something I look forward to every month.”
“I am so grateful for the CEE YED Mentoring program. Starting my full-time career in the industry not too long ago, I was looking for a mentor in the structural design space. Alexandra Thewis shared her knowledge regarding her varied projects, technical paper submissions, and career path within Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. I was able to get a glimpse of her daily objectives and how I can incorporate the same goalsetting in my career. Through our conversation, I learned about the importance of prioritizing design collaboration in the early stages of a project. Alexandra talked about her collaboration with architects on all her projects and gave some useful tips and advice for practicing good communication. I am honored to have Alexandra as a mentor and thankful to stay connected with CEE Alumni!”
“The UIUC YED mentorship program has been an incredible learning experience. Both my mentor and I share a strong interest in geotechnical engineering, and specifically the tunneling and underground construction industry. Through this mentorship experience, I have gained a greater insight into career opportunities and pathways for advancement in the geotechnical engineering industry. Furthermore, learning about my mentor’s work experiences has been uniquely inspirational and has expanded my awareness of ways further research and innovation can help an industry overcome challenges. As a result, an opportunity arose for me to help an industry-academia partnership that my mentor is currently involved in. Looking into the future, I hope to continue to cultivate this mentorship relationship which has played a strong role in my professional development.”
Professor Clyde Kesler
By Helmut Walter (BS 1972)The article in the CEE Magazine summer issue featuring the dedication of the new CEE building and the Concrete Canoe display prompted me to dig out some old photos, articles and even a bit of video which were fun to look at and remember good times at UI.
I and three fellow Coast Guard Officers (at the University of Illinois to get our BSCE) were in this class with about 15 UI civil engineering undergrads. When Professor Kesler asked us if we preferred to build a canoe or a picnic table for a class project there was not much discussion – a canoe it was. At the same time Professor Kesler challenged a number of other Midwest engineering schools to a concrete canoe race that spring to build on the previous year’s two-canoe race between Purdue and Illinois.
After some debate on how to design the shape and lines of a concrete canoe, we decided the traditional canoe shape might do and found one to copy. We built a wooden mold to shape the ¼” rebar skeleton, fastened “rat wire” to the rebar and then hand applied our concrete mix to the wire. Our first canoe was sound and stout but
on the heavy side. We built a second canoe and used vermiculite (it may have been perlite) for aggregate and wound up with another sound but considerably lighter canoe. We were off to the races!
Professor Kesler recruited Purdue and 14 other schools to the second Great Midwest Concrete Canoe Race at Eagle Creek Park, Indiana, on April 29, 1972. It was a bit rainy that day but what fun! Three heats, and at least one canoe that sank. I don’t remember who won – it wasn’t UI – I think we took third.
Professor Kesler was one of the many great teachers I had in my three semesters at UI. Expert in his field, fun loving, able to easily relay his knowledge to us and inspire us to do the best.
Great and fond memories from so long ago!
“When Professor Kesler asked us if we preferred to build a canoe or a picnic table for a class project there was not much discussion – a canoe it was.”
Scan this QR code to watch a video of footage of the 1972 class building the canoe, sea trials in Crystal Lake Park and clips from the invitational race near Indianapolis, provided by Helmut Walter. Or watch at youtube. com/ceeatillinois
Do you have old concrete canoe photos or video that you would like to share? Email Kristina Shidlauski at kshidlau@illinois.edu
Above, top to bottom: Applying the hull concrete. Making the hull skeleton. Professor Clyde E. Kesler with the curing canoe.
The hull skeleton.
Launch day.
The canoe skeleton, with the wood mold used to shape the rebar skeleton in pieces in the lower right corner. Helmut Walter is at the far left.
Pathogens in wastewater can help identify the presence of infectious disease in a community. A research team led by CEE professor Thanh Huong (Helen) Nguyen seeks to improve wastewater monitoring to rapidly detect the emergence and spread of infectious disease in the current COVID-19 pandemic and to detect other pathogens that could cause future pandemics. A $1 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will fund their work.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for effective tools to monitor the emergence and spread of infectious diseases. During the pandemic, wastewater sampling has been widely deployed as a cost-effective, screeninglevel approach to assess infection levels in communities. Effective wastewater monitoring can detect pathogens in community populations and help public health officials make decisions by provid-
ing practical structures for the effective use of wastewater surveillance data in infectious disease control. The research awarded under this grant will improve how wastewater surveillance systems are used for detection of pathogens in community populations.
“Future pandemics will require that wastewater surveillance be deployed
quickly and effectively,” Nguyen said. “While a pandemic or epidemic is global or national, pathogen transmission is local.”
Using this grant funding, the researchers plan to develop a system to rank physical locations where wastewater monitoring should take place to detect the presence of disease-causing pathogens based on accurate predictions from integrated analysis of data streams for weather, human mobility, healthcare, civil infrastructure, population density, sociodemographics and the current COVID-19 pandemic.
“One innovative aspect of the project is to forecast infectious disease transmission based on transportation network analysis, and this forecast will be verified by the monitoring data of sentinel sites along interstates,” Nguyen said.
Results from the project will include a transmission forecasting model for waste -
A team led by civil and environmental engineering assistant professor Christopher Tessum will use edge computing systems to predict areas of concentrated, traffic-related air pollution. The project, “Predicting hyperlocal air pollutant concentrations using AI at the Edge,” received seed funding through a DPI-Argonne Science Team award.
Collecting hyperlocal information about air pollution using existing methods involves expensive equipment that is difficult to acquire, maintain and operate. In this project, researchers will add air pollution sensors to an existing network of nodes built on an edge computing platform to collect meteorological, audio, video and other data – all of which will be used to help detect and charac-
terize passing vehicles and related emissions. From there, the team will create a machine-learned model to predict measured concentrations of fine particulate
air pollution caused by traffic at each node location.
“What we’d ultimately like to do with this project is to create a system that can estimate the amount of air pollution caused by traffic at a given location using relatively inexpensive sensors, which could contribute to detailed maps of air pollution in a city,” Tessum said.
The project is a collaboration between researchers at UIUC and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). The work will combine ANL researchers’ expertise in edge computing and artificial intelligence with UIUC researchers’ expertise in air quality measurements and air pollution modeling.
“Creating distributed, intelligent networks of computational systems that are
water monitoring, a tested system to identify optimal monitoring sites, and a secure platform for data storage and analysis to provide actionable wastewater monitoring information to public health officials for pandemic control. Results will be communicated to public health officials through the National Association of County and City Health Officials, which is collaborating with the grantee on the project.
“Protecting public health is one of EPA’s highest priorities,” said Chris Frey, EPA Assistant Administrator of the Office of Research and Development. “This research will provide critical information about understanding the presence of viruses and other pathogens in communities across the U.S. and support public health officials as they make decisions in current and future pandemics.” i
Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT) has released the conceptual video of the Illinois Autonomous and Connected Track (I-ACT), the University of Illinois’ proposed high-speed, multimodal test track. I-ACT will offer a variety of settings and environments under which to develop and test emerging connected, autonomous and electrified technologies for several modes of transportation.
I-ACT, which will be housed at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s ICT in Rantoul, Ill., will provide a real-world testbed for a nearly endless range of potential applications in transportation. Those applications will focus on meeting the needs of the rapidly evolving mobility and freight industries, as electrification, 5G communications and cybersecurity are transforming the way we move goods and people.
The three-lane test track will allow various types of vehicles such as semitrucks, cars and connected truck platoons to drive continuously at 75 mph. The lanes will be equipped with sensors to allow vehicles to not only communicate with each other, but also with the roadway.
Researchers will be able to test vehicles day and night at I-ACT in all four seasons as well as various weather conditions such as rain, fog, snow and ice.
The I-ACT initiative will establish partnerships between government agencies, academic institutions, key industry members, nonprofit organizations and private industries across many disciplines.
Current partners include Governors State University, Illinois Department of Transportation, Illinois Tollway, Mobility Illinois, Northwestern University, University of Illinois Chicago, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Village of Rantoul, among others. Discussions of collaboration and partnerships with private industries are forthcoming.
The stakeholders will meet early next year to discuss AECOM’s conceptualization plan, and the I-ACT team will gather feedback and direction for the track’s final design and its critical research areas.
Imad Al-Qadi, ICT director and UIUC Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering, is thrilled about I-ACT’s possibilities and progress to date.
exposed to the elements is extremely difficult, so we are grateful to be working with the leaders in this field at Argonne,” Tessum said. “By combining their expertise with the expertise in air pollution we have at UIUC, we hope to create a new application for their network.”
Tessum is joined on the project by fellow University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign researchers Mei Tessum, research assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, and Volodymyr Kindratenko, Assistant Director at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at UIUC, and Argonne Laboratory scientists Pete Beckman and Nicola Ferrier. i
Key to I-ACT is a focus on building a greener, more sustainable future. IACT’s lanes will feature wireless charging – which allow drivers to charge their electric vehicles as they go – and energy harvesting – a technique in which energy is captured and converted into electricity.
“This is an exciting and critical time in the transportation industry,” Al-Qadi said. “I-ACT is poised to help address the challenges the freight and e-commerce industries are facing as well as lead the development, testing and implementation of smart mobility to ensure safe, resilient, secure and sustainable movement of people and goods.” i
The proposed Illinois Autonomous and Connected Track. I-ACT will include a three-lane test track for several modes of transportation, along with urban, suburban and agricultural areas for testing emerging technologies, and leasable space for research. Scan the QR code to view the conceptual video of I-ACT or visit ict.illinois.edu/i-act.
The CEE Alumni Association Distinguished Faculty Award recognizes faculty who have made outstanding contributions to the department, to the education of our students, and to the pursuit of knowledge and the betterment of society through research. It is conferred by the Civil and Environmental Engineering Alumni Association Board of Directors at a luncheon on the day of their fall meeting.
For being the Founder of the Advanced Transportation Research and Engineering Laboratory (ATREL) in Rantoul; establishing the Barry J. and Pauline G. Dempsey ATREL Endowment Fund to generate income for unrestricted support of research and operations at the Advanced Transportation Research and Engineering Laboratory; for being the Founding Director, Center of Excellence for Airport Technology (CEAT); and for his exemplary dedication to teaching, research and professional practice in the field of Transportation Engineering.
Professor Emeritus Barry J. Dempsey (PhD 69) served on the CEE transportation faculty from 1969-1999. During his time at Illinois, he was the founding Director of ATREL and CEAT, both of which helped CEE at Illinois advance transportation research. Dempsey developed useful products to solve pavement problems such as the interlayer stress absorbing composite material, which carries U.S. and foreign patents and has been used in numerous airport and highway pavement projects. Dempsey also pioneered the development of the Integrated Climate Model that has been used extensively in research and design procedures.
For being a pioneer in the development of discrete element modeling; the first to use polyhedral, or angular, particles (everyone else was using spherical) and developing some of the earliest methods to model individual particle movements. For being one of the first to propose the use of artificial neural networks to represent material models; for seeing the power of artificial neural networks and genetic algorithms and continue using these methods for material modeling, soils, structural applications, geotechnical applications and biomedical engineering. Dr. Ghaboussi has been described as a “Thinker, pioneer and visionary.”
Professor Emeritus Jamshid Ghaboussi joined the CEE faculty in 1973. He taught courses in structural analysis, FEM, structural dynamics and soil dynamics. His research interests include computational mechanics, earthquake engineering, analysis of long span bridges, and emerging new technologies in computational intelligence. He holds several patents which resulted from his research, including two in collaboration with other CEE faculty related to determining the properties of materials by testing the structural systems of which they are a part.
For pioneering the investigation of hydrologic problems from the perspective of fluid mechanics and the development of computer models in the holistic modeling of watersheds; for being one of the first researchers to work on urban storm water drainage and for being the founding member of the Chinese American Water Resources Association. Professor Ben Chie Yen educated and inspired students who became civil and environmental engineering leaders around the world.
Ben Chie Yen served on the CEE at Illinois faculty for 35 years (1966-2001). He was an internationally recognized leader in hydraulics and hydrology. His major contributions were in open-channel hydraulics, urban drainage, watershed hydrology, and reliability and uncertainty analyses in hydro-engineering. He worked with Ven Te Chow, pioneering the investigation of hydrologic problems from the perspective of fluid mechanics and the development of computer models in the holistic modeling of watersheds. Yen was one of the first researchers to work on urban storm water drainage. Yen died in 2001.
Uthman Mohamed Ali, Research Engineer, won the CEE Staff Excellence in Research Award.
Research Assistant Professor Mohamad Alipour won the Aftab Mufti Medal from the International Society for Structural Health of Intelligent Infrastructure for best paper of 2020, “A big data analytics strategy for scalable urban infrastructure condition assessment using semisupervised multi-transform self-training,” published in the Journal of Civil Structural Health Monitoring. Alipour also was named a 2022-2023 Faculty Fellow by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. His project, in collaboration with Robert Sisneros, is “Mixed Reality Platform for Immersive Physics-based Structural Digital Twins.”
Imad Al-Qadi was named the Grainger Distinguished Chair of Engineering.
Professor and Head Ana P. Barros was appointed to the Climate Security Roundtable of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and the American Society of Civil Engineers Industry Leaders Council.
Ximing Cai was named the Ben Chie Yen Professor. Mindy Calcagno was promoted to Program Coordinator.
Eun Cha was promoted to Associate Professor.
Joan Christian, Graduate Program Coordinator, won the Outstanding International Advocate award from UIUC’s Office of International Student and Scholar Services.
CEE Staff Excellence Awards were given to Audrey Donoho, Senior Research Projects Coordinator; Su-
zanne Lowry, Senior Research and Policy Analyst; and Marissa Miller, Office Manager.
J. Riley Edwards was promoted to Research Associate Professor.
A team led by Ph.D. candidate Aryan Emaminejad placed second at the 2022 Intelligent Water Systems Challenge, held by the Water Research Foundation and the Water Environment Federation. The team also won the Most Elegant Solution Award. Other team members were CEE Ph.D. candidate Samuel Aguiar, Juliana Mejia Franco (Technology Provider, Sentry, Canada), and Jeff Sparks (Utility Partner, Hampton Roads Sanitation District Nansemond Treatment Plant, Va.) The team was advised by CEE Assistant Professor R.D. Cusick.
Megan Everette, Outreach Specialist, Sheree Fruzen, Office Manager, and Katya Trubitsyna, Strategic Data Manager, celebrated 10 years of service with UIUC.
Professor Larry Fahnestock was named the Siess Faculty Scholar. He also was appointed the Director of the Newmark Structural Engineering Laboratory.
Two CEE Ph.D. candidates won awards in the student poster competition at the Geo-Resolution conference at St. Louis University. First place ($1,000) went to Laura Gray (MS 21) for her poster, “Impacts of global climate change on total runoff.” Gray is co-advised by Associate Professor Ashlynn Stillwell and Assistant Professor Lei Zhao. Third place ($500) went to Jennifer Nugent (BS 19, MS 20), for her poster, “Monthly Virtual Blue and Grey Water Transfers on the U.S. Electric Grid.” She is advised by Stillwell.
Associate Professor Jeremy Guest was named the David C. Crawford Faculty Scholar.
Ph.D. student Hannah Lohman and senior Abby Culloton have each received the Outstanding Collegiate Member Award from the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). This annual award is given to a maximum of 10 students from among all university SWE sections.
The award honors SWE members with at least two years involvement with the organization who have made an outstanding contribution to SWE, other engineering groups, their community and campus.
“Our section is so proud of Hannah and Abby for winning this award, and I’m especially proud of the CEE representation,” wrote Leah Courtney, fellow CEE student and SWE president at UIUC. “They have truly gone above and beyond for our section and this award is so well deserved.”
The Illinois chapter of SWE supports women and underrepresented genders of all backgrounds and identities to pursue careers in engineering and technology by developing a diverse network and providing mentoring relationships and professional development opportunities.
Mani Golparvar-Fard was promoted to Professor.
Assistant Professor Ramez Hajj was named an Outstanding Reviewer for the Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering.
Youssef Hashash was named the Grainger Distinguished Chair of Engineering.
Marc Killion was promoted to Research Lab Shop Supervisor.
Garth Osborne, Laboratory Mechanic, Michael Uhall, Program Coordinator, and Jennifer Bishop, Office Support Specialist, were acknowledged with CEE Quarterly Staff StandOut awards for Fall 2022.
Professor Jeffery Roesler’s Ph.D. student Jordan Ouillet won the American Concrete Institute’s 123 Committee Concrete Research Poster Session Best Poster Award for his poster, “Quantifying the Compactability of RollerCompacted Concrete with Gyratory Compactor.”
Professor Oscar Lopez-Pamies was named the Colonel Harry F. & Frankie M. Lovell Endowed Professor.
Brian Lorbiecki was promoted to Senior Research Projects Coordinator at the Illinois Center for Transportation.
Assistant professor Roman Makhnenko has been named a 2022-2023 Faculty Fellow by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Makhnenko’s project is “Physics-Informed Neural Network Modeling of Fluid Flow in Microporous Materials.”
Iffat Moin was promoted to Office Manager. Moin also celebrated five years of service with UIUC.
Professor Marcelo H. Garcia has been elected a 2022 Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) “for pioneering work on sediment transport and morphodynamics of rivers and marine environments.” Fellows are recognized because of remarkable innovation and/or sustained scientific impact in Earth and space science. The honor is given to fewer than one-tenth of 1% of AGU members.
“AGU Fellows serve as global leaders and experts who propel our understanding of geosciences,” read AGU’s September 19 announcement. “Their research, which pushes our boundaries of knowledge to create a healthy planet and beyond, is an inspiration to us all. We are grateful for their invaluable contributions, hard work and sacrifice.”
“This recognition is of special significance since I became a member of AGU while in graduate school at St. Anthony Falls Laboratory, University of Minnesota, arguably the cradle of modern riverine and marine morphodynamics,” Garcia said.
Garcia holds the M.T. Geoffrey Yeh Endowed Chair of Civil Engineering and serves as Director of the Ven Te Chow Hydrosystems Laboratory. He joined the faculty of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1990. He teaches undergraduate courses on Water Resources Engineering and Hydraulic Analysis and Design. At the graduate level he teaches Environ-
mental Hydrodynamics, Sediment Transport, River Morphodynamics and OpenChannel Hydraulics.
Garcia’s current research interests are in wastewater surveillance for SARSCoV-2 informed by stormwater simulations of virus transport and decay in sewer networks; hydraulics of Roman aqueducts, urban flooding and excess water management during extreme storm events; river mechanics, including meandering streams, bank erosion, morphodynamics and movable-bed physical modeling; sedimentation hazards such as mudflows, alluvial fans, non Newtonian hyperconcentrated flows and rheological properties; riverine sedimentation, coastal engineering and morphodynamics.
Garcia and the 53 other Fellows elected this year will be formally recognized at the AGU’s Fall Meeting, Dec. 12-16, 2022.
CEE assistant professor Ro Cusick has been awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award to advance their research related to recovering phosphorousbased minerals from municipal wastewater.
Harmful algal blooms caused by the release of excess phosphorous from agricultural runoff and wastewater treatment plants pose a major threat to water security in the Great Lakes region. Seeking to limit harmful environmental impacts while still meeting the demand for phosphorous fertilizers, some wastewater treatment plants have installed technology to recover struvite, a mineral that can be used as a slow-release fertilizer. Unfortunately, these new technologies are poorly understood and experience frequent upsets which disrupt the plants’ ability to meet permit limitations for phosphorus discharge.
With this award, Cusick will work to advance the fundamental understanding of struvite crystals growth and recovery in wastewater, and develop modeling tools that could be used to tune and control the growth and precipitation to enhance both recovery of phosphorous fertilizers and wastewater treatment plant phosphorus removal efficiency. The award will also support the development of an outdoor science camp for LGBTQIA+ high school students in central Illinois.
CAREER awards, administered under the Faculty Early Career Development Program, are the NSF’s most prestigious form of support and recognition for junior faculty who “exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.” i
By JiM lAfAvE (Bs 86, Ms 87)
The UIUC Student Steel Bridge Team qualified for the 2022 national Student Steel Bridge Competition (SSBC), which was held over Memorial Day weekend at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Va. This came after the team’s successful showing at the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 2022 Western Great Lakes Regional Student Symposium, hosted by the UIUC student chapter of ASCE in April.
The 2022 SSBC, which was also sponsored by the American Institute of Steel Construction, involved designing, fabricating and constructing, as well as lateral and vertical load testing, of 20-foot long (approximately one-tenth-scale) structural steel bridges representing a wildlife crossing over an interstate highway. Overall judging was based on construction speed, weight, deflections, efficiency, economy and aesthetics.
The SSBC road to Blacksburg began with 139 college and university teams competing in 20 regional competitions. Only 34 of them qualified for the national competition, with the UIUC squad finishing in the top 15 schools overall for the first time in recent memory.
UIUC hosted the national competition in 2018. i
This summer, a group of University of Illinois students joined others from University of Iowa and Virginia Tech to build a bridge in a rural community in Eswatini (in Southern Africa) as part of the Engineers in Action Bridge Program. Students in the EIA Bridge Program spend the school year fundraising, training and designing in preparation for an annual summer trip to build a footbridge for a community in need. CEE students Dion Shen, Rachel Chen and Soren Mayendia, along with Colin Zimmers (MechSE) and Aaron Perez Araya (undeclared) made the 2022 trip from Illinois. Follow the QR code to watch their inspiring video capturing their experience in Eswatini.
Former CEE department head Nicholas P. Jones has been appointed as the new ex ecutive vice president and vice president for academic affairs of the University of Illinois Sys tem, President Tim Killeen an nounced today.
Jones will serve as secondin-command to the president, senior operating officer and chief academic officer of Illinois’ flagship university system.
He comes to the U of I System from Pennsylvania State University, where he is a special adviser to the president after serving as executive vice president and
provost for nine years, beginning in 2013. Jones will begin his new role on Jan. 3, 2023.
Killeen said Jones’ experience as a leader in both academic and budget matters at Penn State makes him the ideal person to assume his new role at the U of I System.
“Nicholas Jones brings to his new role here decades of leadership experience and a deep understanding of how to foster excellence at scale across a multi-university system. I’m pleased he has agreed to join us and look forward
to working together for the people of Illinois,” Killeen said.
Jones said he is honored to join the U of I System two decades after serving as head of the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UIUC. He led the department from 2002-04.
“The University of Illinois System is a leader in public higher education, opening doors to opportunity and helping to meet the economic and social challenges facing this great state,” Jones said. “I believe the U of I System is poised to serve as a transformative and defining trailblazer, a change agent. I look forward to helping these three extraordinary universities thrive in the years ahead.”
Brian Pianfetti was promoted to Director of Research.
Art Schmidt was promoted to Clinical Associate Professor.
Professor Emeritus David Lange’s PhD student Karthik Pattaje Sooryanarayana won the American Concrete Institute’s 123 Committee Concrete Research in Progress Best Presentation Award for his presentation, “3D printing with concrete – Development of a vibrating nozzle for material extrusion.”
Professor Bill Spencer delivered the Fazlur Rahman Khan Distinguished Lecture at Lehigh University, “Performance of Dynamically Excited Structures through Optimization and Monitoring.”
Professor Timothy D. Stark will give the 2023 Martin S. Kapp Lecture to the American Society of Civil Engineers Metropolitan Section Geo-Institute Section. Stark is only the fourth faculty member from CEE to be invited to present this lecture, joining Ralph Peck, Alfred J. Hendron Jr. and Don U. Deere. The Kapp lecture will take place in New York on January 17, 2023.
Becky Stillwell, Senior Academic Adviser, celebrated 20 years of service with UIUC.
Andy Waratuke, Research Engineer, celebrated 20 years of service with UIUC.
Kristina Wilson, Grants and Contracts Specialist, and Jeff Wright, Office Administrator, were acknowledged with CEE Quarterly Staff StandOut awards for Summer 2022.
Assistant professor Jinhui Yan and Ph.D. student Qiming Zhu placed second in two challenges in the 2022 National Institute of Standards and Technology Additive Manufacturing Benchmark Modeling Challenges. Yan and Zhu won second place for modeling results predicting the timedependent absorption during laser spot welding; and modeling results predicting the melt pool geometry for a scanned laser weld.
Assistant Professor X. Shelly Zhang has been selected for a Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. She also is one of four faculty scholars at UIUC selected to advance academic research on risk management and preparedness during the 2022-23 academic year.
CEE at Illinois alumnus Halil Ceylan (MS 95, PhD 02) is one of three individuals from across campus who has been awarded the University of Illinois Alumni Association’s (UIAA) Alumni Achievement Award for 2022. The award is the highest honor bestowed upon alumni by the UIAA on behalf of the University of Illinois. It is presented to those alumni who have attained outstanding success and national or international distinction in their chosen profession or life’s work, and whose accomplishments reflect admirably on or bring honor to their Alma Mater.
“CEE is very proud one of our own alumni won the highest honor conferred by the UIAA,” said CEE Department Head Ana P. Barros. “Professor Ceylan earned his Ph.D. in CEE exactly 20 years ago, and has since built an impressive career in transportation engineering. In 2021, he received the CEEAA Distinguished Alumnus award and the James Laurie Prize for significantly advancing transportation engineering with his career contributions in smart, sustainable and resilient transportation infrastructure systems from ASCE. We are thrilled!”
Ceylan is the Pitt-Des Moines Inc. Pro -
fessor in Civil Engineering and the founding Director of the Program for Sustainable Pavement Engineering and Research at the Institute for Transportation at Iowa State University (ISU), where he has been teaching, conducting research and mentoring graduate students and research staff as a faculty member since 2002. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and Chair of the Geo-Institute’s Pavements Committee and Transportation and Development Institute’s UAS Impacts Task Force Committee. Ceylan received the CEE Alumni Association's
Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2021, for "demonstrated leadership, significant noteworthy research achievements, education, mentoring and training of next generation engineers; and for outstanding contributions to the advancement of the field of transportation engineering."
The UIAA honored the winners of its 2022 awards at the UIAA’s annual Awards Gala on October 13, 2022. That weekend, Ceylan also visited the CEE department for lunch on the Kavita and Lalit Bahl Smart Bridge with Professor Erol Tutumluer and some of the students in his research group.
The other UIUC alumni who received this award are David Hafemeister (MS 60, PhD 64) from the Grainger College Department of Physics; and Amber McReynolds (BS 01) from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. i
Arun Chaiseri (MS 60) has been named the 2022 recipient of the Madhuri and Jagdish N. Sheth International Alumni Award for Exceptional Achievement. The International Achievement Awards recognize outstanding alumni, faculty and students whose exceptional work, service and/or scholarship has made a significant, global impact. He was cited for making tremendous contributions to the development of civil engineering practice and construction technology in Thailand.
Chaiseri is recognized as the most famous structural engineer in Thailand. His contributions have included engineering innovations that enabled the construction of very tall buildings and deep basements. He played a leading role in the setting of structural engineering standards for the Engineering Institute of Thailand. Chaiseri is a professor emeritus of structural engineering at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, and the founder of Arun Chaiseri Consulting Engineers Co. Ltd.
Born in Bangkok on Oct. 4, 1934, Chaiseri began his college education at Assumption College, earned his bachelor’s degree in engineering with honors from Chulalongkorn University (1956), and a master of science in civil engineering from the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign (1960). He has been awarded honorary doctorate degrees from several universities.
Chaiseri joined the faculty at Chulalongkorn after earning his bachelor’s degree and later earned a scholarship to pursue further study in the United States. In 1976 he rejoined the faculty at Chulalongkorn, teaching classes in structural theory, structural analysis and structural design. In 1979, Chaiseri established Arun Chaiseri Consulting Engineers Co. Ltd. He retired from teaching in 1980.
After founding Arun Chaiseri Consulting Engineer Co. Ltd., Chaiseri played a leading role in shaping the skyline of Bangkok, improving the safety of structural engineering in Thailand as a whole and serving the profession and society through public service.
Chaiseri’s public service to Thailand and the engineering profession has included serving as a Senator of the Thai Parliament (1996-2000), during which he was instrumental in passing Engineer Act B.E. 2542, which limited foreign ownership of certain Thai industries. He was appointed President of the Engineering Institute of Thailand under the King’s Patronage (1994-1995 and 1996-1997); served as the first president of the Council of Engineers, Thailand (2000-2003); and was senior volunteer in the Brain Bank Project, Office of the Board of National Economic and Social Development (2001-2008). He served on the Committee of Building Control, Ministry of Interior, Thailand (1984-2007).
Chaiseri’s many awards and honors have included Fellow of the Academy of Sciences in Engineering, the Royal Insti-
tute; Distinguished Alumnus Award, CEE Alumni Association, UIUC (2008); CEE at Illinois Distinguished Alumni Ambassador Award (2019); Outstanding Alumni Awards in Civil Engineering, University of Illinois Alumni Association Thailand Chapter (2013); Outstanding Alumni, Chulalongkorn University Alumni Association under the Royal Patronage (1983); Outstanding Alumni, Assumption College (1993); Award for innovative contributions as an ASEAN outstanding contributor to concrete technology, American Concrete Institute (1994); Knight Grand Cordon (Special Class) of the Most Noble Order of the Crown of Thailand (2004); Knight Grant Cordon (Special Class) of the Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant (2009); The Dushdi Mala (2009); Prominent Thai Fulbrighter, All-Time-Fame Fulbright Thailand’s Hall of Fame (2010)
Established in 2000 with a generous gift from Dr. Jagdish and Mrs. Madhuri Sheth, the Madhuri and Jagdish N. Sheth International Alumni Award for Exceptional Achievement recognizes international alumni who are highly distinguished in their profession. i
The nature of engineers’ work is their legacy in the form of projects they design or build. T.C. looms large in this respect, with three mega-projects completed in his lifetime. But his choice to spend his retirement sharing his extensive knowledge with thousands of students and colleagues worldwide transcends even these accomplishments. He taught with a passion, confidence and warmth that was engaging and inspirational. His legacy is thus expanding geometrically through all the good work his students are doing, and will do, in the coming decades. I am fortunate to call T.C. a colleague, a mentor and most importantly a friend.
– Chris Barkan, Professor and George Krambles Director of the Rail Transportation and Engineering Center, CEE, UIUC
Tsung-Chung (T.C.) Kao, international expert in high speed rail, CEE instructor and research professor, and director of RailTEC’s High Speed Rail System program, died September 29, 2022, in Taipei, Taiwan. He was 73.
Kao completed his B.S. in Civil Engineering at the National Taiwan University (1971), his M.S. in Structural Engineering at Rutgers University (1974), and an M.S. (1975) and Ph.D. (1977), both in Geotechnical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
Following more than a decade of experience with several major engineering projects, he began working with the Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) project in 1990, for which he participated in the initial feasibility study. Beginning in 1994, he served as the Adviser to the Provisional Office of the THSR project. After the project was privatized in 1997, he served as the Vice President of Engineering for the THSR Corporation for 11 years. In this role he participated in the design, construction and initial operation and commissioning of the THSR system.
Following his retirement from
THSRC in 2008, Kao resumed his academic career, teaching at National Taiwan University, National Central University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The classes he developed and taught include High Speed Rail Engineering, High Speed Rail Planning, High Speed Rail Construction Management, High Speed Rail Operation and Maintenance, and Integration Project Management, with particular illustrations of his experience on the Taiwan High Speed Rail project.
Kao also served as the adviser to World Bank on its High Speed Rail Projects in China. In 2014, he was invited by Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway Corporation to serve as the Independent Expert for their GuangzhouShenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link Project. Kao presented numerous invited lectures on high speed rail to railways, government offices and universities all over the world. He was a licensed Professional Engineer in California and Taiwan.
"Professor Kao was one of the smartest, kindest people I had the pleasure of learning from during my time at UIUC. There are few people who make an impact on you that lasts a lifetime, and Professor Kao was one of those people. One interaction with him will leave you feeling inspired and motivated to achieve your dreams and be the best version of yourself. Wishing his family peace, courage and lots of love at this time. May his soul rest in peace. Thank you for everything, Professor Kao."
– Anusha Suryanarayanan (MS 14) Rail Engineer, Jacobs, India
"In retrospect, the ‘185-mph rolling lecture’ he gave during our HSR trip was an important influence on my later transition to railway academia. I can only hope that my lectures convey the same sense of passion and wonder at the possibilities of railway engineering that T.C. exuded whenever he spoke."
– C. Tyler Dick (MS 01, PhD 19) Assistant Professor, University of Texas at Austin
"I have many memories of Professor Kao in class and at RailTEC happy hours, and I will always be grateful to him for sharing his knowledge, experience and good humor with us as students. Professor Kao exhibited an amazing combination of serious-mindedness and joy in teaching. He always went the extra mile to deepen our understanding of high-speed rail ... He supported me extensively in obtaining a fellowship to intern at Taiwan High Speed Rail Corporation for a year, not just writing me a letter of recommendation but actively facilitating my placement and learning experience.”
– Samantha Chadwick (BS 10, MS 14, PhD 17) WSP, Transit and Rail Engineer
This fall, the department welcomed its largest first-year class in at least a decade, which also contains one of our greatest percentages of women students: 33 percent! Pictured here in front of the new Civil and Environmental Engineering Building are many of our first-year women students. The first-row students are mentors from the Women In Engineering Camp. At right in the first row is Rebecca Stillwell, Senior Academic Adviser.
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
The Grainger College of Engineering
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory MC-250
205 North Mathews Avenue
Urbana, Illinois 61801
