UIC Engineering Fall-Winter 2015 by UIC College of Engineering

Engineering Design Team Students Engineer Winning Robots

Fall/Winter 2015

Also Inside:

Small Scale; Big Solutions Deepening the Talent Pool Exelon Powers Student Internships Jumping in with Both Feet

Table of Contents 1 Message from the Dean

2 Small Scale; Big Solutions Nanotechnology research in the College

Philanthropy 6 Deepening the Talent Pool Knowles gift creates new programs 8 Jumping in with Both Feet Young alumni tackle that first job

12 Exelon Powers Student Internships Summer work sets students on the career path 14 CAT in the College Longtime company presence on campus supports student achievements

16 Engineering Design Team Students Engineer Winning Robots

19 Around the College

On the Cover:

Fall/Winter 2015

Chicago EDT’s mining robot, Surus. Surus competed in the 2015 NASA Robotic Mining Competition and placed third overall out of 46 teams. It’s programmed to localize itself, drive through chaotic terrain, and dig and deposit simulated Mars dust (or regolith) into a collector bin.

The College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago publishes UIC Engineering. We welcome your comments and suggestions. Please direct questions about this issue to Joel Super (jsuper@uic.edu). Associate Director of Communications: Joel Super Editorial Writer: Kirsten Gorton Photographers: Bart Harris Graphic Designer: Edward Lawler Copyright © 2015

Please direct address corrections or mailing requests to: Renata Szandra College of Engineering (MC 159) 851 South Morgan Street Chicago, Illinois 60607-7043 (312) 996-0520 or rszandra@uic.edu

Message from the Dean Dear friends, alumni, and students, To feel the energy of the new and returning students across campus this fall has been great. Enrollment figures for this academic year show that demand for a College of Engineering degree is strong and getting stronger. I am proud to note that, as our student body grows, the quality and diversity of students continues to grow as well. For the fifth consecutive year, the average ACT composite score for incoming freshman has increased, reaching an all-time high, while the number of women and underrepresented students has grown as well. Total Undergraduate Enrollment 2015

2955

2014

8.5 % Percent Increase

2724

Total Graduate Enrollment 2015 2014

1604

33.3 % Percent Increase

1203

Graduate Enrollment by Degree 2015 MS 2014

1006 657

2015 PhD 2014

“… as our student body grows, the quality and diversity of students continues to grow as well.”

53.1% Percent Increase

489

10.6% Percent Increase

442

From the perspective of the entire university, total enrollment for the fall semester is up nearly four percent from last year’s total, at 29,048. The student population includes 17,511 undergraduate, 8,114 graduate, 3,007 professional, and 416 continuing education students. I am pleased to note that we’ve also increased our faculty numbers in the College, hiring eight new assistant professors and five new associate professors. This impressive group includes four recipients of the highly competitive National Science Foundation CAREER award, an accolade that provides five years of grant funding to outstanding early career faculty for integrating their innovative research with undergraduate and graduate education. I believe that demand from employers for our graduates plays a significant role in the increasing demand from students to earn UIC College of Engineering degrees. In fact, over the last two years, more than 500 companies have hired UIC engineering students and graduates for internships and full-time positions, including some who have hired five, ten, or more people. Numbers like these tell an important story about our success as an institution. But, of course, numbers don’t tell the whole story. Institutions are made up of individuals, and knowing a bit about their stories gives us a glimpse of the many ways that the education available here creates personal opportunity. As the articles that follow illustrate, these stories of research discoveries, career trajectories, and educational experiences are as diverse as the dynamic city of Chicago that we call home. Yours sincerely,

Pete Nelson, PhD Dean

A nanoparticle is 20,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

Small Scale/ Big Solutions Faculty Use Nanotechnology to Fix Large-Scale Problems By Rick Asa

Faculty across the College’s six departments are working at the nanoscale to find innovative solutions to crop failure, bridge collapse, and other big challenges. Here, we look at a few of the promising solutions, parts of a research field that is full of tiny things with potential for delivering huge impact. A Nanofiber “Band-Aid” for Plants The wounds or tears caused by routine plant pruning are an open door for fungal infections that can drastically reduce crop yields. Alexander Yarin, PhD, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, has helped to mitigate this problem through a nanofiber patch he developed which is now being tested in California vineyards, on Illinois fruit trees, and on timber overseas. The patches are made from a dense network of nanofibers, and are applied, like a Band-Aid™, to a grape vine or fruit tree following pruning. They have been shown to prevent common microscopic fungal spores from entering the plant, thereby preventing possible infection, yet their matrix still allows the plant to “breathe,” which speeds healing of the tear and prevents rotting. The patches work because the webbing of the matrix is only three to five micrometers apart, while fungi, which have caused the loss of up to 40 percent of the grape harvest in some countries, are 20 to 50 micrometers in size. To put the size into perspective, a human hair ranges from about 20 to 180 micrometers in diameter. The nanofiber web is made by blending soy protein, an abundant agricultural waste product, with a synthetic polymer in about a 50:50 proportion. This solution could replace wax and tar patches, which have been used to block the fungus in the past but interfere with healing and can cause soil contamination. Considering

the more than 8,300 vineyards in the United States alone, a commercialized patch could have an enormous positive economic and environmental impact. Yarin and his team are exploring how other high-value products could be created from nanofibers such as improved cleaning wipes; membranes to filter out nanoparticles in water remediation or for the pharmaceutical industry; and biomedical applications including producing barriers to fungi, bacteria, and virus penetration. Nanobiology Fights Human Disease Combatting human diseases forms the epicenter of some of the College of Engineering’s nanotechnology research. Michael Stroscio, PhD, and his team in the Departments of Bioengineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering, are using man-made quantum dots (nanoparticles made of a semiconductor material) to investigate their potential for treating disease. A UIC distinguished professor and the Richard and Loan Hill Professor of Engineering, Stroscio has been able to identify cancer cells by exposing them to yellow quantum dots carrying molecules that attach to receptors on the cancer cell surface and appear as light under a microscope. “They’re like little light bulbs,” Stroscio says. “Cancer cells are tens of microns in size, but quantum dots are only 10 nanometers, so they pinpoint cancer-related integrins [receptors] on the cell.” Practical medical applications may include expanded capabilities for detecting very young cancer cells and cellular dysfunction, tracking stem cell movement and differentiation— which would be pertinent to a range of cures, including for colon and oral cancers—and manipulating neurons to alter neurological signals that are related to brain diseases. For example, using quantum dots with electric

fields may make it possible to control neurons. “If you had an overactive neuron, you could decrease the level of activity,” he notes. That, in turn, could prevent or reverse neurological disorders and diseases. Using Nano-spores to Detect and Collect Water Vikas Berry, PhD, associate professor and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering, and his research group put graphene (see sidebar) quantum dots on living

• Biologists estimate

that between 10 and 50 percent of the world’s fruit harvest is lost each year to fungal attack.

• According to the

American Society of Civil Engineers, 147,870 of the nation’s 607,751 bridges were structurally deficient or functionally obsolete as of 2013.

bacterial spores as a means to measure humidity, with potential applications ranging from food storage to finding water on other planets. By putting the dots on living bacterial spores, they create a NanoElectro-Robotic Device (facetiously called a NERD) that contracts or expands when the humidity around the spore changes, which affects the way electrons move through the graphene quantum dots and can be measured with electrodes applied to the end of the spore. This gives the whole device a high activity level and mobility, said Berry, associate professor andinterim head of the Department of Chemical Engineering. The device enabled 3

his team to differentiate between minute changes in humidity at a very low humidity range, currently a big challenge. The key is the spores, which are extremely sensitive to changes in moisture. The approach Berry and his team developed could take advantage of the unique biomolecular structure of other micro-organisms and their incredible sensitivity. That property

Graphene

is a single, tightly packed layer of carbon atoms linked in a chicken-wire pattern. It’s the thinnest known compound at one atom thick, incredibly light (1 square meter weighs about 0.77 milligrams) and equally strong—up to 300 times stronger than steel, with tensile strength of 150,000,000 psi. It is an unequaled conductor of heat and electricity, fantastic at light absorption, and perfect for spin transport, where the flow of electrons with defined spin is manipulated via magnetic field. This makes graphene invaluable in research that involves quantum mechanics, the place where nanoparticles dwell. Graphene plays a major role in much of the nanotechnology research done at the UIC College of Engineering. could also potentially be used to control cells, conduct biochemical analysis, and track molecular activity, which has applications in areas including bioelectronics, biosensors, and biomimetics, or biomimicry—a field that seeks to emulate how nature solves problems. Some facsimile of Berry’s discovery might even be implanted to monitor biological function at a level of sensitivity that would far exceed that of the machines used today. 4

Creating Self-Cleaning Materials with Nanostructured Coatings Like Professor Yarin, Professor Constantine Megaridis, PhD, and his students look for discoveries that can be commercialized, preferably with sustainable, abundant, environmentally-friendly materials. A pioneer in manipulating surfaces to make them superhydrophobic (extremely water repellent) or superhydrophilic (extremely effective in attracting water), Megaridis has used nanoparticles to prepare selfcleaning coatings that can be used on a wide variety of surfaces, including metals, glass, plastics, paper, and fabric. The coatings can use either an organic or water-based solvent and be customized for the material being treated. “The ability to make coatings out of common ingredients that have different functionalities is unique about what we do,” he says. Water hitting these coated surfaces beads on contact. The beads collect and remove dirt, dust, and other debris while rolling along, leaving behind a clean surface. Key potential high-end applications of such self-cleaning coatings include the aerospace, shipping, electronics, medical implant, building, and home windows and home siding industries. Megaridis has also done work with great humanitarian potential in areas of the world with scarce water reserves. In a perfect example of biomimicry, he designed a nanoengineered fabric that can collect drinking water from fog. His design imitates the ability of a beetle, living in Africa’s Namib Desert, to collect water. The beetle has a textured back that traps moisture in the air from early morning fog. When the beetle becomes thirsty, it can tip its back end up, letting the collected water droplets roll into its mouth. His lab is also focusing on “functionalizing” fabrics for other uses. For example, Joseph Mates, a postdoctoral researcher in the

Megaridis Lab, is exploring how nanocellulose might be manipulated for a host of functional filtration applications. “The tensile strength of cellulose is higher than steel’s, it’s a renewable material that can constantly be refreshed and supplied, but there are challenges in working with it,” Mates says. “That’s why our industrial partners are interested. There’s a learning curve to harnessing these advantages for economic viability.” Dissipating Heat in the Nanoworld Needs Precision Utilizing graphene, a pure carbon material with extraordinary ability to dissipate heat, could improve function in virtually every nanotech device. But creating sheets of graphene large enough to layer on nano-electronics isn’t yet possible because producing films large enough to use introduces flaws at the grain boundaries that negatively affect heat transfer capacity. Research by Amin Salehi-Khojin, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, and his research group (in collaboration with researchers at the University of MassachusettsAmherst and Boise State University) solved this conundrum for researchers and developers alike by discovering why the heat doesn’t dissipate across the graphene film as quickly as would be expected. (see sidebar for more on graphene) When single-layer graphene crystals are neatly lined up, heat transfer occurs just as predicted by theory. But if even two inter-connecting crystals have misaligned edges, the heat transfer is ten times lower than theoretically predicted. And, as graphene films get bigger, the misalignment becomes more likely. Salehi-Khojin’s team developed a finely-tuned experimental system that lays down a graphene film onto a silicon-nitrate membrane only

A nanoparticle is 100,000 times smaller than a 12 point dot.

four-millionths of an inch thick. It can also measure the transfer of heat from a single graphene crystal to another. The system is sensitive to even the tiniest deviations in the heat flow, enabling the team to quantify the effect of small-scale structural variations on the thermal properties of graphene. This break-through brings product developers closer to using graphene more efficiently to dissipate heat and improve electronic functions in potentially hundreds of nanotech devices. Big Safety Improvements from Tiny Sensors Following the horrifying Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis in August 2007, engineers scrambled to assure Americans that the nation’s bridges would not begin to fail en masse. Improving fault detection that could prevent disasters like the one in Minneapolis—or in thousands of high-

➡

This is a 12 point dot.

rise buildings, roadways, and aircraft— helps drive Didem Ozevin, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Materials Engineering. She is developing micro sensors, or MEMS (micro-electro-mechanicalsystems), that could detect structural faults very early. Ozevin’s MEMS are tiny, making them cost effective and able to be more efficiently mass-produced. Potentially, virtually every square inch of a structure could be monitored in real time, making early detection and correction of structural faults possible. The tiny sensor systems demonstrate both practical and economic value for the aerospace industry because they could be placed anywhere on an aircraft prone to structural failure yet add little weight, avoiding added fuel costs.

Ozevin says nanotechnology and her MEMS research naturally overlap because the two are interdependent for developing new devices that will rely on nanomaterials still being tested for their versatility and properties—particularly graphene. For example, two important devices used in nanotechnology research are both MEMS devices: the tunneling-tip microscope that detects individual atoms and the atomic force microscope that is used for placement of molecules and atoms on a nanosubstrate. Both facilitate nanoscale discoveries because they provide much higher resolution than optical microscopes. Just the Beginning of Great Things In a landmark talk more than 50 years ago, the visionary physicist Richard Feynman saw a new understanding of nanotechnology coming. “It is a staggeringly small world that is below. At the atomic level, we have new kinds of forces and new kinds of possibilities, new kinds of effects … [the challenges] of manufacture and reproduction of materials will be quite different.”1 Nanotech researchers at the UIC College of Engineering are accustomed to tackling those challenges, while also expanding nanotechnology’s boundaries and demonstrating its potential in ways Feynman couldn’t have predicted. : Richard Feynman, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” Caltech Engineering and Science 23, no. 5 (Feb. 1960) 1

“If you can detect a small defect as soon as it happens, you can repair it before there is any structural failure,” Ozevin says. “That could potentially save lives and high costs of repair.” 5

Philanthropy

Itasca, Illinois, tech company specializing in acoustic electronics that almost certainly produces the microphone in your cellphone. Recently, the company committed $100,000 to help the College encourage women to position themselves for rewarding careers of their own by considering engineering as a profession.

Deepening the Talent Pool Knowles Corporation A by Joel Super

gift aims to encourage women engineers

lumnus and Engineering Advisory Board member Jeffrey Niew had four good job offers when he graduated from UIC in May of 1988 as a mechanical engineer. Three—Ingersoll Rand, Inland Steel, and ComEd—were in the Midwest. But the one in California won. By the first day of June he had moved across country and was working for Hewlett-Packard. Twenty-seven years and a rewarding career later, Niew (BS ’88) is president and CEO of Knowles Corporation, an

The donation funds a scholarship program for female engineering students and a new summer engineering program for female high school students—both aimed at helping young women start to build their engineering careers. This gift aims to increase and diversify the pool of highly qualified engineers working in Chicago. Graduating more engineers, Niew believes, will help drive economic prosperity locally and nationally by creating the environment that can produce the next Google, Apple, or Microsoft. “If we don’t encourage women to become engineers, we miss out on a large segment of the population and the diversity of ideas they bring” he says. “It’s also about having enough engineers to do the research, then the product development and actual production, then, ultimately, creating a company that generates value for people through jobs and opportunities.” Nova Xu, a senior at Walter Payton College Prep, plans to be one of those engineers. Xu was among the 22 high school juniors and seniors who attended the inaugural threeweek Women in Engineering Summer Program (WIESP) that the Knowles gift made possible. “It’s always good to have more voices, and I think the voice that’s especially lacking right now is the female’s voice in engineering,” she wrote in her program evaluation. Students from both the Chicago Public Schools system and suburban high schools applied for a spot in the WIESP program. In order to be

WIESP participants prepare to step inside the microphone “clean room” at Knowles.

interviewed, applicants were required to have a 3.2 overall GPA and As and Bs in their math and science classes. The curriculum, which focused this year on civil engineering and computer science units, was designed to be varied, exciting, and hands-on. “Choosing the curriculum was difficult. There was no way we could highlight all of our majors.” said Elsa Soto, assistant director, Academic Resource Center, who oversaw the program. “We wanted to provide a short but intense program but didn’t want to overwhelm students; we wanted it to be fun and something they enjoyed every day.” Field trips to the Chicago Transit Authority; to the College’s Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL); to the iconic Chicago architecture firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; and to Knowles headquarters rounded out the presentations and workshops. Judging by the anonymous responses to the program’s exit survey, students regarded this facet of the program highly. One student wrote “I rate the field trips a ‘9.’ My favorites were the EVL and Knowles Corporation. I loved the part at Knowles where we dressed in lab stuff and toured the clean room, and I also loved the big screens at EVL. It was just cool.”

Exit survey responses also indicate that the program hit the mark overall. One student wrote, “There isn’t anything like this program for students like me where I live. Thank you for providing me the opportunity to expand my horizons and discover a possible future career path.” Another commented about the civil engineering unit, “I enjoyed the ‘Cities & Structures’ unit the most because I felt like I really got to get my hands dirty and think and act like an engineer by designing bridges.” How did these students think about spending three weeks of their summer investigating engineering? Most felt the program lasted just the right amount of time, but there were outliers who wanted more. Said one, “Too short!” Wrote another, “I think four or five weeks would be better.” However they tweak this inaugural version of the program, says Soto, “We want them to have a positive experience here so they see us as the right place to pursue an engineering degree and know they’re going to get all the resources they need for success.” Hard working students like these, with a passion to acquire new knowledge, are exactly the sort Niew and his colleagues at Knowles think need to be cultivated and encouraged, both for their benefit and society’s. “You have

to have perseverance and a willingness to work hard. That passion takes you a long way in life,” Niew says. To help encourage young talent, a portion of the Knowles gift is devoted to scholarships. The scholarships will help ensure access to an UIC engineering education for young women with that drive to learn and for whom the scholarship will make life a little easier. The new scholarships will provide three incoming freshmen a $10,000 scholarship over two years and also award each of five continuing students a $2,000 scholarship. Niew thinks it’s money well spent, a way for this local technology company to foster great engineering careers, improve the way we do things, and help maintain U.S. technological preeminence. “If you think about the things that have changed our lives over the last 20 to 30 years, the U.S. has been at the forefront,” he says, pointing to the way engineering-driven advances like the rise of the Internet have revolutionized the way we do many things. One day in the not-so-distant future, an engineering degree earned with the help of the Knowles Corporation may just equip a hard-working UIC graduate to lead a technology business revolution of her own. : 7

Jumping in with Both Feet

by Kirsten Gorton

After four years working hard to earn their engineering degrees, these newly minted graduates are taking on their first professional roles in very different but equally exciting arenas.

Siham Hussein (BS ’15)

Degree: computer science Job: software engineer at Google “I love the challenge and the real-world applications that come with programming,” says Siham Hussein, who is a few months into her full-time position at Google in New York City. As a software engineer on an infrastructure team, she helps manage internal tools that process and aggregate display-advertisement data that allows Google to report the number of clicks, views, and interactions to its customers. After coming to the United States with her family when she was 10, Hussein spent most of her time playing on their new desktop computer. “I drew on Paint all day long,” she says. “I guess you could say that’s where my interest started.” Her programming class at Chicago’s Von Steuben High School is where she discovered an outlet for her fascination with computers. But even then, she never imagined she’d end up as the first computer science undergraduate at UIC to win an outstanding TA award or as president of UIC’s Women in Computer Science (WICS) group, encouraging fellow women to become computer scientists. Hussein sees in hindsight how her undergraduate education prepared her to enter the workforce with confidence. “Without the course work and research experience at the UIC BITS Laboratory, I don’t believe I would have made it where I am today,” she says. That includes landing her Amazon internship last year, after connecting with a representative at a women’s computer science conference under UIC’s auspices, subsequently leading to three job offers before graduation. While Hussein admits the work at Google is challenging, she knows the rewards are bigger. “I want to make an impact in the world, and I think I can do that with computer science. It’s a very versatile field, so I feel like all doors are open for me.”

David Klawitter (BS ’15)

Degree: civil engineering Job: civil engineer at Mackie Consultants Environmental sustainability became David Klawitter’s passion during his undergraduate years at UIC. Having worked on both the regulatory and engineering sides of sustainability while he was in school— interning with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and with a private engineering firm—Klawitter is positioning himself to be a leader in the civil engineering field. “I love the resources UIC offers, because it isn’t just a university, but it’s a university within a city. It gives you great opportunities to interact beyond the walls of your school,” he says. This external educational focus is a long way from the high school student who was almost exclusively focused on academics. “It wasn’t until I arrived at UIC that I opened up to the social aspects of education.” Klawitter’s epiphany came during his freshman year when he joined EcoCampus, UIC’s student sustainability organization. He then served as the group’s president and became active with UIC’s Sustainability Thinking Committee and the Chancellor’s Energy and Sustainability Committee. “It’s amazing the number of people you can work with and things you can do at UIC. But, I mean, that’s the point of college: to discover your interests and start dedicating your time to them.” Since starting his full time career, Klawitter is dedicating his time to water resources, doing stormwater and floodplain management work as a civil engineer for Mackie Consultants, part of the Burke Group. He also plays an active role in the College’s Engineering Alumni Association. For Klawitter, what’s important is doing the most good that he can as an individual. “Engineering is the field where I’ve gotten the tools, training, and knowledge that will allow me to be the best person I can be and allow me to have the biggest impact that I can.” See more about David in Around the College on page 19. 9

Frank Marotta (BS ’14)

Degree: electrical engineering Job: controls integration engineer at General Motors “I’ve always been a car guy,” says 38-year-old Frank Marotta, who now works as a controls integration engineer at General Motors’ historic Milford Proving Grounds. Six years ago, his life looked much different as he trained in Boston to repair luxury vehicles while playing music with his wife, a folk singer. Today, they live in Ann Arbor—now with two daughters—and Marotta is in his element. “It’s a very cool place. I drive a lot and sometimes take prototype vehicles off property to work on at home.” His main responsibilities include evaluating the preproduction vehicles’ software packages and working on the company’s most advanced electric car arriving on the market next year: the Cadillac CT6 plug-in hybrid. While he sees the irony of training to work on internal combustion engines only to switch to electrification work, learning about the possibility of electric vehicles and other alternative propulsion technologies is what motivated him to go back to school. His passion for green mobility along with his electrical engineering courses and two internships at Tesla Motors in Silicon Valley prepared him to become an expert in the growing field. “I always liked to take things that people were doing and find ways of improving them—that’s very true to who I am,” says Marotta. “I think it’s good to feel like you’re going to be challenged.” He finds that engineering offers him that opportunity every day. “You show up to work and there are problems. And people have tried to solve them. They’ve put their best foot forward, and you can be the next person with a fresh set of eyes, a fresh set of ideas, maybe a slightly different skill set, to fix them.” 10

Alejandro Vera (BS ’15)

Degree: mechanical engineering Job: mechanical engineer at 20/10 Engineering Group, LLC At the age of 26, Alejandro Vera realized he needed a college degree to fulfill his dreams. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be what I thought was called a professional inventor,” he says. “I didn’t know that was basically an engineer.” Initially skipping a college career to work in the family staffing business, Vera discovered the path to his vocation after enrolling at a community college. His biggest motivation for going back to school, and, ultimately, for pursuing mechanical engineering at UIC, was the prospect of becoming a dad. Finding out his wife was expecting triplets had a huge impact on his determination to get it done. “I want to do well by my kids, and I always knew I wanted to be the type of dad whose kids could ask him any question with confidence that he could help,” he says. Learning about his nontraditional work and educational path, he finds, has inspired many people because it shows there’s a place where you can achieve your goals on your schedule. While being a full-time student, Vera also worked as a research assistant in UIC’s Micro/Nano Fluid Transport Laboratory, where he helped find more efficient heating, filtration, and condensation applications using fluids on an extremely small scale. The most intellectually rewarding thing about engineering, he says, is working on projects that are brand new—what engineers call “white space.” “It doesn’t only happen in the lab; you can find your niche within a company by making products more efficient,” he notes. And that can be financially rewarding—a good thing when you have a family to raise. Today, Vera has taken what he’s learned at UIC to 20/10 Engineering Group, LLC, a suburban Chicago engineering consulting firm. There, his goals are simple: “I’d like to contribute something tangible that helps people, but most of all, I want my kids to be proud.” : 11

Exelon Powers Student

Meet Cesar Bueno (BS ’16) and Sri Vadrevu (BS ’17). They’re two of 18 UIC engineering students who interned this summer with an Exelon Corporation subsidiary and added to the more than 75 UIC engineering students who were hired by the Fortune 500 company within the past four years for an internship or fulltime employment.

Cesar Bueno, a first-generation college student, always excelled in math and found an outlet for his talent after learning more about engineering through the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers at his junior college. After transferring to UIC to earn his mechanical engineering degree, he took his first step into industry by meeting a ComEd representative at a UIC Engineering career fair.

Recruiting program specialist Kyle Wiersbe, who coordinates Exelon’s college-level internship program, says there are reasons the number is growing. “UIC is right in our backyard, and it’s prioritizing the same initiatives. So, it’s been a natural step to com-

bine efforts in establishing inroads to career opportunities.” The inroad for Bueno was field experience in energy delivery at ComEd’s downtown office. For Vadrevu, it was troubleshooting systems and facilitating alarm software at Exelon Generation’s power plant in Morris, Illinois. To get to these places, both students took advantage of the College’s resources to polish the skills that would help them get their feet in the door. Bueno connected with peers in the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. “Some of the members recommended visiting the Engineering Career Center,” says Bueno. “I’m glad I did. The staff there helped me shape my résumé and practice interview skills.”

Internships Vadrevu took a more varied approach, talking to staff and faculty and taking guidance from his Engineering 100 class and the College’s Freshman Engineering Success Program. “I feel like a lot of other universities downplay communication and leadership skills,” he says. But Vadrevu believes UIC’s focus on skills outside the classroom, as well as inside, has helped transform him into a more confident and motivated prospective employee—one who Exelon would hire.

“We find UIC students are prepared, savvy, and hard-working. We’re happy to provide opportunities for them to grow as engineers,” says Scot Greenlee, Exelon Nuclear Generation’s senior vice president for engineering and technical services, who has served since 2011 on the College of Engineering Advisory Board.

by Kirsten Gorton From the students’ points of view, nothing beats having engineering experience on a résumé. “Working at Exelon has been an invaluable experience. I loved the teamwork atmosphere and directly applying what I’ve learned in school,” says Vadrevu. To Bueno, the experience was inspiring. “Whether it’s planning a job or making sure customers get power again after a storm,” he says, “you really are powering lives here.” :

Electrical engineering student Sri Vadrevu knew early on that he wanted to attend college and got interested in engineering while taking an electronics class at age 14. Following that passion ever since, he recently completed his second internship with Exelon Generation after landing his first during his freshman year through the College’s Guaranteed Paid Internship Program.

IN THE COLLEGE

Longtime company presence on campus supports student achievements

eoria-based Caterpillar Inc. (CAT), a generous and longtime UIC partner, continued that tradition as the 2015 principle sponsor of EXPO, the College’s senior design competition. The company’s support helped provide students a public forum for their advanced design, prototyping, and applied research projects. CAT’s more than 15 year history of support for engineering at UIC includes providing scholarship assistance for up to 12 recipients annually, as well as diverse programmatic and student-organization support, especially for Team: Hector Castaneda, Timothy Steadman, Janee Spruille, Michael Brannon, and Michael Getz Category: Chemical Production II Project: Fractionation and Transportation of Shale Gas Team: Kyle Wise, John Clarke, Ashley Przybysz, Joe Andrews, and Steve Kwon Category: UIC Infrastructures and Sustainability Project: UIC High Bay Structural Testing Laboratory

underrepresented students. Among these organizations are the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), and the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). CAT representatives have come to campus regularly to speak

to these student groups and provide mentorship and career guidance. The student-led organizations, in turn, have been active in outreach efforts that promote careers in STEM fields to Chicago high school students. For instance, with the CAT support, SHPE has sponsored Noches de Ciencias (Science Nights) for more than 700 Chicago students and their parents. CAT has consistently hired UIC graduates and also assisted students with their professional development activities through its support and participation at Engineering Career Prep Day, Engineering Résumé Expo, and the College’s Engineering Career Fair. EXPO at UIC has been proving for 26 years that the creative and the practical coexist very nicely in the prac-

tice of engineering. For students, the annual event marks the culmination of their undergraduate studies. CAT employees have been volunteering as project judges at the event for nearly two decades. CAT and the College share a natural affinity, given the fundamentally practical and creative nature of the CAT endeavor, which has relied on engineering innovation beginning with its introduction of the steam-powered crawler tractor in the early twentieth century and continuing through its evolution into the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines, and diesel-electric locomotives. At the College of Engineering, CAT finds intelligent, persistent, ingenious, and creative students who can help

continue this innovative history. These students must prepare themselves to excel in a broad range of areas critical to the manufacturing functions of international companies like CAT— ranging from logistics to manufacturing and from technical marketing to environmental health and safety. CAT’s 2015 partnership with the College once again helped UIC engineering students showcase how they’re trained to confront everyday problems in a systematic, team-based, pragmatic way. Engineers who can offer companies like CAT innovative solutions that improve products, processes, and structures in all areas of engineering contribute to a robust economy, build satisfying careers, and improve lives for people all over the world. :

Engineering EXPO 2015 Sponsors Principle Sponsor Caterpillar Inc.

Sponsors: Elara Engineering UIC Engineering Alumni Association Susan (BS ’82) and Peter Errichiello Jr. Shirley Felder (BS ’84) Gregory R. Lewis (BS ’75, MS ’76)

Team: Evan Kline-Wedeen (L) and Mark Connolly (R) with friend Noel Padiyil Category: Medical Processes Project: Body Weight Support System for Ambulatory Cancer Patient Rehabilitation

Ali Khounsary (MS ’82, PhD ’87) Kathy McGuire (BS ’90, MS ’94) Molex Peoples Gas with special thanks to Joe Tassone (BS ’02, MBA ’06)

Team: Joseph Cecala, Thomas Derrig, Nazar Bodnarchuk, and Sara Krysik Category: Mechanical Devices and Products Project: Automated Reagent Dispensing Instrument

Engineering Design Team

by Kirsten Gorton

UIC’s award-winning Engineering Design Team members bring together varied backgrounds but a shared passion for creating robots for competition.

Scipio is an autonomous robot that navigates an outdoor obstacle course using feedback from a high-precision GPS and compass, inertial measurement unit, monoscopic camera system, laser range finder, and wheel encoders. L-R Bart Wyderski (BS ’16), Krystian Gebis (BS ’17).

fter NASA’s recent announcement that Mars appears to be more than a frozen, desolate landscape, the College’s Engineering Design Team (EDT) is more excited than ever to return to the NASA Robotics Mining Competition (RMC). Participating for the first time two years ago in the competition at the Kennedy Space Center, the student-led, interdisciplinary engineering organization built a robot that could autonomously navigate a simulated Martian terrain, dig, and collect as much icy regolith simulant (loose, broken rock) as possible in 10 minutes—an objective that directly benefits NASA in finding innovative ways to robotically excavate well-insulated water ice. In their rookie year, UIC’s team placed ahead of half of the 34 competing schools. This year, they mined twice as much regolith, won third place for team spirit and third place overall against 45 other teams. Apart from the RMC, EDT students also design and build robots for two other competitions: the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC), an annual international competition involving 50 teams that complete a series of outdoor obstacle-course challenges; and the Midwestern Robotics Design Competition (MRDC)—formerly the

Illinois’s senior senator, Dick Durbin, visited campus on April 17, 2015, to meet the team. L-R Senator Durbin, Peter Nelson, dean, Jasen Massey (MS ’15).

Jerry Sanders Creative Design Competition. This annual regional competition for teams that build remote-controlled robots is hosted at the Urbana campus where, last year, 29 teams competed. Involvement in autonomous competitions (the IGVC and RMC) shows the team’s recent growth. “Reaching this level beyond remote-controlled robots has pushed them quite a bit technically,” says their faculty advisor Milos Zefran, PhD, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. “They had to learn about image processing, computer vision, navigation, and localization—which are relatively sophisticated robotics tasks that push an undergraduate student—and they’ve been really good at mastering them.” Developing versatility is a hallmark of EDT members and encouraging peer mentorship is a key strategy for the team to maintain a winning edge in a

high-turnaround atmosphere. The team, for example, builds three robots for the MRDC, giving more new members increased hands-on experience. “It’s a good stepping stone for them to learn the ins and outs of robotics,” says past president Jasen Massey (MS ’15). Massey, who joined the team while earning his master’s degree in mechanical engineering at UIC, had always been fascinated with robotics but, like many EDT members, had no background in the field before joining the group. “Since robotics is an expensive hobby, it’s not very easy to get into it, especially by yourself,” explains Bart Wyderski (BS ’16), mechanical engineering student and the team’s newly elected president, who had no previous robotics experience either. “I was generally interested in mechanical things,” he says. “But once I found out about the resources available to me in EDT, I had to get involved.”

EDT designs and builds remote-controlled robots like this one as an introduction to robotics for new members and for the regional Midwestern Robotic Design Competition. L-R Jon Kopfer (BS ’16), Muhammad Hashim (BS ’17), Lisa Soderlind (BS ’19).

Robotics is a highly interdisciplinary field, and the team reflects that with members pursuing degrees in electrical, computer, mechanical, and industrial engineering as well as computer science and even some nonengineering fields. In addition to bringing their specialties to the group, members often learn applications outside their majors. “Mechanical engineering majors learn electrical engineering principles as well as some software stuff and vice versa,” says Krystian Gebis (BS ’17), computer engineering student and team vice

Outreach event Robot Mania! at the DuPage Children’s Museum

president. “The group definitely helps you become a more diverse engineer.” And a more well-rounded person. The EDT spends more than 10,000 hours every year building robots. Those hours are spent directly applying engineering principles from the classroom, but they’re also spent acquiring other skills critical for success. “I think these are some of our best educated students in the sense that they gain experience in project management, teamwork, leadership, and collaboration,” says Zefran. The environment in the workshop at Roosevelt and Halsted functions much like a professional one. Working there often leads members to internships early in their undergraduate careers. Wyderski believes he would not have received his first internship without his EDT experience. “I’ve had my employers 18

say to me that my hands-on experience with design work was a deciding factor between hiring me and someone else,” he says. “Coming to the shop, doing milling and hands-on work, putting together robots—those things separate me from another person getting the same degree.” In addition to a member’s personal return on investment, the team sets goals to benefit the community with planned outreach events throughout the year. “What UIC offers EDT and what they’re able to use and produce is too good not to be known,” says Massey, who invited Senator Dick Durbin to campus earlier this year. “The senator seemed very excited with what we’re doing. I’m hopeful that’ll help build support in robotics and engineering education.” EDT has also partnered with Project Lead the Way and an engineering summer camp for precollege students at UIC for tours of their facility and has gone off campus to promote STEM at the International Manufacturing Trade Show and the DuPage Children’s Museum and host events to introduce robotics at Chicago elementary, middle, and high schools. Outreach and innovation are key EDT goals. As the team begins a new year, major changes are in the works, including some complete robot redesigns. “Getting together and brainstorming, finding new combinations, trying new material types for the frame or drive trains—all that, I honestly love it,” says Wyderski. While NASA prepares for further robotic exploration on Mars, it’s conceivable that technology concepts being developed in the heart of Chicago may someday help advance the agency’s work. :

History ●

UIC’s Chicago Engineering Design Team (EDT) was founded by UIC students in 2000. Since its inception, the team has grown to more than 40 members and has completed 16 robots.

Achievements ●

EDT has had first-place winning robots in 2006, 2008, 2012, 2013, and 2014 at the Midwestern Robotic Design Competition (formerly the Jerry Sanders Creative Design Competition).

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In 2014, EDT placed second in design at the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition. In 2013, they placed third in design and eighth overall out of 50 teams.

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EDT won third place overall and third place for team spirit out of 46 teams at the NASA Robotic Mining Competition in 2015.