Six Alumni Join Forces to Support Students Spring 2015
Looking Back and Gazing Forward From Bike Paths to Bridges Engineering Alumni Celebrate a Milestone Technology Takes Aim at Traffic Congestion
Table of Contents 1 Message from the Dean
2 Technology Takes Aim at Traffic Congestion
Philanthropy
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4 Six Alumni Join Forces to Support Students
6 Looking Back and Gazing Forward
Alumni 8 From Bike Paths to Bridges
10 Engineering Alumni Celebrate a Milestone
12 New Hires
14 Around the College
On the Cover:
Spring 2015
Detail from the atrium ceiling in UIC’s Science and Engineering South (SES) building. SES was designed by Walter Netsch and completed in 1968 as part of phase three of the Chicago Circle Campus construction. Architectural/engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill oversaw the project.
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, Bruce Powell Graphic Designer: Edward Lawler Copyright Š 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 The atrium pictured on the cover of this issue captures—in concrete, plaster, and glass—the progressive, ground-breaking spirit that has historically characterized UIC and the College of Engineering. Now nearly fifty years old, this soaring space in the Science and Engineering South Building on UIC’s East Campus was a bold, transformative piece of architecture that aimed high. This spirit of boldness and transformation still defines our mission today as we continue to provide access to excellence and success for students, support new research, and encourage public service.
As we continue to recruit talented faculty to teach and do research, work to maintain access for talented students, and engage our 23,000+ alumni… we align ourselves with the UIC tradition of aiming high.
And for a place that’s always full of energy, we’re at an especially energizing time, as the campus moves into a new era under the leadership of our recently appointed chancellor, Michael Amiridis, PhD, and our three-campus university system welcomes a new president, Timothy Killeen, PhD. Both of our new leaders are tenured faculty members in UIC’s College of Engineering who are thoroughly at home in the worlds of technology and engineering. Chancellor Amiridis is a chemical engineer who served as dean of the College of Engineering and Computing at the University of South Carolina at Columbia before being named executive vice president for academic affairs and provost there. President Killeen is a geoscientist and has most recently served as vice chancellor for research and president of the Research Foundation at the State University of New York. He is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering. I look forward to working with them to move the College forward. Among the stories in this issue, we interview six colleagues with a bold idea to jointly fund student scholarships; we highlight some of the transformative research we do, from helping to alleviate traffic congestion to creating computational tools to study wildlife, to inventing a germ-based nanobot; and we profile an alumna whose work has improved Chicago’s infrastructure and thereby promoted economic development. As we continue to recruit talented faculty to teach and do research, work to maintain access for talented students, and engage our 23,000+ alumni through our newly-revitalized Engineering Alumni Association, we align ourselves with the UIC tradition of aiming high. And we’re going to continue hitting the mark. Regards,
Pete Nelson Dean, College of Engineering 1
Technology Takes Aim at Traffic Congestion
The College’s Artificial Intelligence Lab has been working for years to reduce aggravation and congestion costs for Chicago drivers. A new grant will help expand the work.
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or many drivers, the terms freeway and expressway are idealistic at best and cruelly ironic at worst, as traffic congestion, accidents, construction, and other obstacles keep us from getting to our destinations in good time and in good humor. But UIC engineers are harnessing technology and creating innovations to save us all some time, money, and stress the next time we join the other estimated 255.9 million vehicles on U.S. roads. Researchers in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory will be expanding their work on a
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website and mobile phone apps that give drivers real-time traffic information that help them battle road congestion. The new $5.5 million research contract for this project—the Gateway Traveler Information System (GTIS)—is the latest from the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT). According to Associate Director John Dillenburg, PhD, who oversees the lab’s day-to-day operations, this latest grant means that by 2016 the GTIS program will be responsible for bringing in more than $21 million over seventeen years to support the lab’s work. The GTIS website, TravelMidwest.com—as well as the related mobile phone apps for both the Android and the Apple iOS system—provides real-time traffic maps for the Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, and Rockford metropolitan areas, the Quad Cities, northwest Indiana, and southwest Michigan. Users have free 24/7 access to travel time, congestion, accident, special event, and construction information as well as up-to-theminute weather and roadway conditions reports and links to construction project updates.
The website currently offers users the option of creating customizable reports for routes they typically travel. And now, real-time traffic information for the rest of Illinois, Detroit, and Minneapolis/ Saint Paul will be added to the GTIS as part of this new twenty-one month contract. Expansion will be a challenge, Dillenburg notes, but their track record is excellent. “We have a 99.648% uptime rate for Travelmidwest.com.” Data is gathered exclusively from official government sources, including IDOT, the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, the Chicago Skyway, the Indiana Toll Road, and the departments of transportation in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan. Data from these sources is generated utilizing methods ranging from in-pavement sensors to video cameras and from Bluetooth to radar. In addition to automated information, fifteen individuals are registered to enter incidents into the system. Unique to GTIS are a number of tabular reports, including camera snapshots and video, dynamic message sign text, construction reports for the next day and beyond, and an e-mail alert system. UIC is ahead of the curve on collecting, organizing, and disseminating real-time traffic information to motorists, according to Dillenburg. In 2010, the federal government mandated that by 2014 each state department of transportation provide accessibility to real-time traffic and travel condition information for interstate system highways and by 2016 provide the same for key routes of state-designated metropolitan areas.
But as early as 1991, research involving UIC faculty in the emerging field of intelligent vehicle highway systems was getting off the ground. UIC civil engineering professor David Boyce was involved early on in the Advanced Driver and Vehicle Advisory Navigation Concept (ADVANCE) Project, as it was dubbed, which brought together a number of entities and individuals to collaborate in creating a dynamic, in-vehicle route guidance system. “I’d seen an article in the mid-1980s about in-car display maps that included your car’s location, which opened a new window for me,” Boyce said. ADVANCE participants, under the aegis of the Illinois University Transportation Research Consortium, included Boyce, UIC computer science professor Peter Nelson, Northwestern University civil engineering professors Joseph Schofer and Frank Koppelman, the Federal Highway Administration, IDOT, and Motorola. The goal of this public-private partnership was to develop a prototype in-vehicle route guidance system that would help ameliorate traffic congestion, improve safety, and reduce infrastructure costs and environmental impacts. Although the device itself was never marketed, the information-gathering system that had been developed became part of IDOT’s Intelligent Transportation System. “This is where Gateway got started,” said Dillenburg. “We standardized how data came into the system and streamlined things, improving system compatibility.”
They’ve been producing engineering advances ever since, working to expand, improve, and refine the system, both for the private citizens and the public agencies that use the information. For instance, Dillenburg and his staff developed an automated incident alert system to relieve information overload to state agencies. Now, agencies can choose to receive only notification of events from the system that are related to their function. This is a service no private traffic information service provides. The lab has also developed a road construction tracking system that eliminates ambiguity by allowing private contractors to submit construction updates online once and then making that information readily available to IDOT. But clearer reporting of the construction is just one benefit of the lane closure system (www.idotlcs.com). The system also has automated many of IDOT’s rules and limitations for contractors, as well as highlighted violations such as closing too many lanes and closing lanes too close to another closure.
Increasingly, traffic congestion isn’t just a big-city problem anymore, experts say. And Dillenburg sees the GTIS system continuing to grow, expanding downstate to bring travelers there the same level of customized information Chicago metro area travelers can access. More information from more sources will increase the challenges of interfacing with all the state agencies involved. But the lab is up for it, Dillenburg says. “Our goals will remain to keep the information flowing and improve the transportation system for everyone.” :
John Dillenburg, PhD
“Our mission in the AI Lab is to focus on applying artificial intelligence methods to solve real-world problems,” said Peter Nelson, director of the lab. “Providing real-time traffic information to travelers and creating new, improved software systems for traffic control fits right into our public-service mission.”
Gateway Travelers Information System by the Numbers: ■ 2, 375 miles of road currently covered, requiring 639,512 lines of code to produce ■ 24/7 free access to real-time traffic information
■ 420 million travel-time statistics collected since October 2004 ■ 745 cameras on website with a 2015 upgrade to 1,548 ■ 3,288 congestion reports generated yearly ■ 776,805 GTIS users in the last year
■ Average 1,270 construction entries entered daily (231 manual/1,039
automated) in peak construction season
■ Average 271 incident entries entered daily (20 manual/251 automated) in
inclement weather.
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Philanthropy
Six Alumni Join Forces The Sargent & Lundy Scholarship Fund
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ngineers are trained from day one to work in teams. So perhaps it is natural that six executives at Sargent & Lundy headquarters in Chicago (all UIC College of Engineering alumni) decided to adopt a team approach to philanthropy. These six alumni will provide $30,000 annually for five consecutive years to benefit up to twelve students per year. Together, their individual commitments represent $150,000 in academic scholarship support to educate engineers. Dennis Demoss (MS ’81), speaking for colleagues Tony Neri (BS ’79); Ejaz Shameem (BS ’85); Shiven Sulkar (BS ’90); and Tom Behringer (MS ’87), credits colleague Tom Meehan (BS ’83) with putting together the idea for making a joint $150,000 commitment. “It’s our personal money, but we’re doing it in the name of our company and for UIC, since UIC is what got us started in the business, and there are some very qualified students at UIC who lack funds,” he said.
All agree that this scholarship gift is good for families, for companies like Sargent & Lundy, and for society at large. “The return on investment [of a UIC engineering degree] for parents and students is great,” said Meehan. “UIC is one of the best values in education in the country.” From both the business and personal perspective, Neri added, “Our goal is to develop good engineers and provide opportunities for individuals. We find UIC students are well-rounded and hard-working, ‘an engineer’s engineer.’” And the positive from the 10,000 foot viewpoint, Demoss noted, is that the technological advances that have helped drive the U.S. economy for the last sixty-five years have relied on the work of engineers—and the partners believe that will be true in the future, too. Although its impact is everywhere, having led the electrical-power engineering business for 125 years, the partners agree that the firm they are so proud of doesn’t have wide name-recognition outside the industry. Still, noted Demoss, “Sargent & Lundy was the Silicon Valley
of electrical power when it started. We’re six guys connected with a silver thread to Thomas Edison,” said Demoss, referencing cofounder Frederick Sargent’s work for various Edisonfounded companies in Chicago and New York during the late nineteenth century before starting his own firm. Sargent is acknowledged as the designer of what was in the early 1900s the largest and most advanced generating plant, which was located in Chicago. Sargent and partner Ayres Lundy engineered many projects that pushed the boundaries of plant design, and as Meehan pointed out, “Each generation of the firm’s engineers has added to this legacy.” Today, the company Messrs. Sargent and Lundy started is still a privately held entity but has grown to employ some 2,500 people domestically and operate offices and field locations in North America, South Asia, and the Middle East, designing state-of-the-art projects globally. The firm’s divisions cover fossil power, nuclear power, renewable energy, and power transmission, which provide
The Alumni Donors Tom Behringer (MS ’87) civil engineering
Shiven Sulkar (BS ’90) electrical engineering
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Dennis Demoss (MS ’81) materials engineering
Tom Meehan (BS ’83) civil engineering
Tony Neri (BS ’79) mechanical engineering
Ejaz Shameem (BS ’85) civil engineering
to Support Students The 2014-15 Scholarship Recipients James Pinkl (BS ’15) electrical engineering
Abdul Aziz Yakubu (BS ’15) electrical engineering
Amari Griffin (BS ’16) industrial engineering
Nicholas Lordis (BS ’17) electrical engineering
consulting, engineering, design, planning, and project-management services to clients worldwide. Long careers at the firm are common, the partners say, partly because these individuals can work on diverse, interesting projects moving among the divisions. While Meehan and Shameem are senior vice presidents in Sargent & Lundy’s fossil-power division, Behringer, Neri, Demoss, and Sulkar hold the same positions in the nuclear-power division. Demoss and Meehan serve on the College of Engineering’s Advisory Board, while Behringer serves on the advisory council for the civil and materials engineering department. As a group, their backgrounds differ widely. Shameem trained as a fighter pilot in Pakistan before turning to engineering; Neri, the son of immigrants to Chicago, was the first in his family to attend college; Demoss grew up tinkering in his uncle’s Ohio TV repair shop; Meehan, son of college graduates, manifested an early fascination with dams, bridges, and skyscrapers;
Daniel Wierzbicki (BS ’17) civil engineering
Brendon De Rosario (BS ’16) civil engineering
Behringer worked construction jobs to put himself through two years of college; and Sulkar thinks of himself as “wired to be an engineer,” given that his father, brother, and sister are all engineers too. Though diverse in backgrounds, in addition to their UIC degrees and their
Estefan Diaz (BS ’15) mechanical engineering
partnership to provide scholarships, the six share Neri’s take on making a career in engineering. “Since my days at UIC, I’ve felt that we have the best jobs. To paraphrase the old General Electric ads, ‘Engineers bring good things to life.’” :
Connected through a dynamic network of state-of-the-art resources and tools, Sargent & Lundy’s staff work from multiple offices, field sites, and client offices worldwide to collaborate on projects like this 3-D Building Information Management (BIM) model of a natural gas power plant.
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Looking Back and Gazing Forward
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he UIC Engineering editorial staff asked some faculty members to take a moment and weigh in on engineering developments we’ve seen so far in the new century and what we are likely to see more of in coming years. :
? What are the greatest developments from 2000 to 2014 in your view?
“Crowd-sourced information redefined the way knowledge is collected and distributed (e.g. openstreetmap, Wikipedia); the smartphone redefined the way people connect and the way they interact with their environment (e.g. transit apps have been very helpful to attract new riders); and short-term rental transportation redefined the way people move in the city by not relying on owning a car, while being able to rent one for a short time (e.g. Zipcar and Enterprise CarShare).” -Sybil Derrible, PhD
Assistant Professor Department of Civil & Materials Engineering
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“Social technologies, 3-D printing, and mobile devices. The ways these inventions have been subtly changing how we communicate, design, and access information has yet to be fully appreciated. But looking back will mark an immense paradigm shift where we will not be able to remember how we accomplished certain tasks without them.” -Leilah Lyons, PhD
Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science
“Development of targeted cancerfighting agents in the medical field, social media in the IT area, and advances in materials used for alternative energy such as solar power and batteries. These are key areas for living longer, healthier lives; connecting with people in an efficient manner; and working toward a sustainable earth environment.” -Alan Zdunek, PhD
Adjunct Professor Director of Undergraduate Studies Department of Chemical Engineering
? What were the biggest surprises for you from 2000 to 2014?
“The lack of women in science and the lack of science in policy.” -Max Berniker, PhD
Assistant Professor Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
“The speed of creating large electronic data sets in different applications. There is no doubt that humans have created more data in the last fifteen years than in the whole history of humankind before that.” -Houshang Darabi, PhD Associate Professor Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
“I had expected battery technology and alternative fuels to be further ahead compared to where they are today. But this has social, political, and economic drivers as well. Recently discovered domestic natural gas reserves have totally changed the energy landscape while the fracking operations to recover them pose unprecedented and unknown environmental problems.” -Ludwig Nitsche, PhD Professor and Head Department of Chemical Engineering
“The magnificent roles that silver nanoparticles, nanostructured titanium dioxide materials, and diamondoid molecules have played in bioengineering, materials engineering, and nanotechnology.” -G. Ali Mansoori, PhD
Professor Department of Chemical Engineering and Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering
“One of the most significant areas of development: ubiquitous computing devices, from smart phones to myriad sensors, all operating semi-autonomously on their local task or in coordination with other devices. This complicated computing fabric (some parts of which are called Internet of Things) will sense the world and make decisions, from the “smart house” deciding how to regulate your air temperature and when to buy milk, to the “smart planet” telling us about carbon emissions and hurricane formation. The engineering challenges will range from the mundane—facilitating communication between these devices and increasing their energy efficiency, to the lofty—improving quality of life, providing medical care, and sustaining our planet’s resources. In a secure, robust, and efficient way, of course. This is engineering, after all.” -Tanya Berger-Wolf, PhD Associate Professor Department of Computer Science
?
“First, artificial intelligence. I don’t think we’re approaching the singularity, but I do think in fifteen years we’ll see all sorts of artificial agents that are genuinely helpful. Second, genomics for human health. With the rapid advances in both bioengineering and machine learning, we’re on the cusp of being able to diagnose potential problems with some accuracy and to design things on the molecular level to do something about it.” -Robert Sloan, PhD
What are your predictions for developments between 2015 and 2029?
Professor and Head Department of Computer Science
“Additive manufacturing. Materials other than plastic will become more ubiquitous. Products will be more customizable. And it’ll become more useful.” -Yeow Siow, PhD Clinical Assistant Professor Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
“Given the federal government’s significant focus on and investment in energy and power-storage improvement over the last few years, I would predict that breakthroughs in the ability to store energy more densely and for longer periods of time, as well as to produce it with a smaller greenhouse gas footprint, will affect many fields. We have seen in the past that a commitment to sustained funding at the federal level pays off in benefits to society: physics, the space program, and environmental research in response to pollution are but a few examples.” -Karl Rockne, PhD Associate Professor and Head Department of Civil & Materials Engineering
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Alumni
From Bike Paths to Bridges by Kirsten Gorton
UIC alumna works to build Chicago’s transportation infrastructure
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eather Gaffney (MS ’90) doesn’t shy away from a challenge. In fact, she says, “it’s the most exciting part of the job.”
That’s a useful trait to have when you’re responsible for overseeing gargantuan Chicago projects like reconstructing the south section of the Dan Ryan Expressway, renewing 10.2 miles of CTA Red Line track, and rebuilding the Wacker Drive interchange. As the senior vice president and central regional director of the multidisciplinary engineering services firm T.Y. Lin International (TYLI), these are among the more high-profile transportation projects Gaffney has managed in her tenure there. Of the eight TYLI senior vice presidents stationed throughout the Americas, Gaffney is the only woman. And she is grateful for the mentorship she had along the way that helped her get there. “In high school, I met a lawyer who impressed me. She recommended that I pursue a technical undergraduate degree before going on to law school, with an eye toward a career in patent law,” she says. Later, as a senior in high school, Gaffney attended an outreach event for women in engineering where she decided to major in civil engineering. At the time, it was a nontraditional path for a woman—more so than it is today—but Gaffney says her parents gave her
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the confidence and encouragement to become an engineer. So she did, earning an undergraduate degree in civil engineering from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree in civil engineering from UIC, and a master’s degree in engineering management from Northwestern University. Today, she’s committed to paying it forward by helping others pursue engineering careers. In addition to her busy professional life, Gaffney is an active member of UIC’s Civil Engineering Professional Advisory Council (CEPAC). Having served with this group for the past seven years, she has facilitated scholarships through her company to benefit UIC civil engineering undergraduates.
Getting to where she is has meant role, she has seen that communicaworking hard both at the basics and tion and critical thinking skills are key at continuing her education. Gaffney’s qualities of a good engineer. To those first professional engineering project starting out in their engineering careers, was to design a new bus maintenance she stresses that they should “never garage for the Chicago Transit Authority. pass up an opportunity to improve their While working full-time, she earned her written, verbal, and critical thinking skills.” master’s in civil engineering and, subDeveloping these skills, she believes, will sequently, her master’s in engineering help improve an engineer’s approach to management. From her start as a staff design and every other area of a project. engineer, Gaffney became a project Whatever the scale or scope of a engineer, and then a project managproject, for Gaffney, if it’s logical, coner. “I made an effort to work in other structible, and meets project intent, areas of project development phases, she’s ready to get the job done. If it’s a which allowed me to have a complete challenge, that’s a plus. : understanding of the phases and their requirements when I made the transition into an office leader Two-way protected bike lanes, like this one role,” she says. on Elston Avenue, are one example of TY Lin
International’s work to improve Chicago’s bike The career she’s built has been a reThese experiences led infrastructure. warding one, mainly because she trusts eventually to a great deal more that building successful projects means executive-level management. making a difference for many people. Today, Gaffney recruits for a Gaffney believes that enriching people’s lives begins with giving them choices. That’s why, among its many areas of expertise, TYLI is a recognized leader in providing bicycle consulting services. Working with the Chicago Department of Transportation for more than fifteen years, she and her team have TY Lin International’s rehabilitation project for Chicago’s Wacker Drive won two national awards in provided engineering services 2014 from the American Council of Engineering for 226 additional Companies. miles of new bike lanes and more than ninety-person team, supports TY Lin International’s renewal project for the 200 miles of signed bike routes to project managers, pursues new Chicago Transit Authority Red Line included date. In 2012, they undertook one of business ventures, and helps reconstruction of 10.2 miles of track and eight station renovations. Chicago’s first two-way protected bike develop and execute corporate lanes on Dearborn Street, a mile marker initiatives, including a new proin helping make the city a world-class gram that promotes technology transfer bicycle town. across the firm. Especially in her current
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Engineering Alumni Celebrate a Milestone M
ore than 100 people gathered at UIC’s Student Center East to share a morning of camaraderie at the alumni brunch hosted by the College and the Engineering Alumni Association (EAA) on February 22, 2015. The morning event was held in conjunction with a day of activities marking the 50th anniversary of UIC’s Circle Campus. Events of the day included a reenactment of the 1965 ribbon cutting; engineering alumnus and dedicated EAA member Bill Hawes (BS ’68, MS ’69), who was on stage at the original event, returned to mark the occasion. The EAA, which has a newly elected board and has held five meetings since the beginning of the academic year, is preparing for an exciting 2015– 2016. “Having an organization where you can meet with people, learn from people, and pursue your own personal growth is valuable for an alumnus at any stage,” says President Jim Vaughan (BS ’78). Objectives for the group include building membership and hosting events that will provide networking opportunities for alumni. “More than anything,” says Dean of the College Peter Nelson, “we want to see alumni able to connect with each other, with faculty, and with the College at large.” :
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New Hires Vikas Berry, PhD
Max Berniker, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering
Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
Professor Berry earned his undergraduate degree from Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, his master’s degree from the University of Kansas, and his doctoral degree from Virginia Tech—all in chemical engineering. Before joining the University of Illinois at Chicago, he served as a faculty member at Kansas State University. Professor Berry’s
Professor Berniker earned his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California, San Diego, and his master’s and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts
research focuses on the growth, interface, and characterization of graphene and two-dimensional, smallscale materials to develop advanced sensors for biocomponents (DNA, bacteria, viral particles, etc.) and chemicals (NO2 , water, etc.); atomically thick, impermeable membranes for imaging volatile material under transmission electron microscopy; ultrafast transistors for computer switches; and solar cells. His group is also working on building nextgeneration molecular machines and biodriven devices.
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Institute of Technology, where he also served as a postdoctoral associate. Prior to joining the University of Illinois at Chicago, Professor Berniker was a postdoctoral associate at Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. His research interests include biological motor control and learning, optimal control, stochastic optimal control, computational neuroscience, biomechanics, machine learning, Bayesian statistics, and statistical inference.
Angus Forbes, PhD Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science Professor Forbes holds a doctoral degree in media arts and technology and two master’s degrees, one in computer science and one in media arts and technology, from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He earned his undergraduate degree in British and American literature
from New College of the University of South Florida. Professor Forbes serves as the director for the Creative Coding Research Group within the College’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory. His
interests include researching topics in information visualization, computer graphics, and human-computer interaction and exploring their application for effectively representing and reasoning about complex scientific data.
Elisabeta Marai, PhD Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science Professor Marai earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees in computer science from the Politehnica University of Bucharest and her doctoral degree in computer science from Brown University. She served as a faculty member at the
University of Pittsburgh—where she founded the Interdisciplinary Visualization Research Laboratory— and a visiting faculty member for Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute prior to joining the University of Illinois at Chicago. Professor Marai’s research focuses on robust, scalable, and effective geometric modeling and visualization tools to solve problems in science and engineering, from intelligent algorithms for automated registration of orthopaedic data to visualization of large-scale data in astronomy and bioinformatics.
Xincheng Yao, PhD
Jie Xu, PhD
Professor, Richard and Loan Hill Department of Bioengineering
Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
Professor Yao holds an undergraduate degree in optical technology and optoelectric instrumentation and a master’s degree in optical instrumentation from Harbin Institute of Technology. He earned his doctoral degree in optics from the Institute of Physics at the Chinese Academy
Professor Xu earned his undergraduate degree in thermal engineering from Tsinghua University and his master’s and doctoral degrees
Yayue Pan, PhD Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering Professor Pan earned her undergraduate degree in industrial engineering and her master’s degree in mechanical manufacturing and automation from Zhejiang University of Technology. She holds a doctoral degree in industrial and systems
of Science and completed his postdoctoral research in biomedical optics at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Prior to joining UIC, he served as a faculty member at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Professor Yao holds a secondary faculty appointment within UIC’s Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Sciences. His research interests include biomedical instrumentation to detect retinal disease and biophysical study of neural systems and endocrine cells.
in mechanical engineering from Columbia University. Prior to joining the University of Illinois at Chicago, he served as a faculty member at Washington State University and founded the Microfluidics Laboratory at Washington State University, Vancouver. Professor Xu’s research focuses on experimenting with smallscale fluid mechanics and building novel devices with microchannels that control fluid-flows. These devices can be used in revolutionary ways, for example, for sample enrichment to detect disease or provide nutrients to bacteria that can produce biofuel. :
engineering from the University of Southern California, where she was also a research assistant. Her current research goal is to advance the understanding of various facets of additive manufacturing (or direct digital manufacturing) and to promote its wide application in future engineering systems.
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Around the College Computer Science Department Named No. 26 Most Innovative in U.S. Computer Science Degree HUB, the online information source on accredited computer science degree programs, ranked UIC’s computer science department twenty-sixth on a list of the fifty most innovative computer science departments in the United States. The HUB made special mention of UIC’s research on artificial intelligence, data mining, computational population biology, and electronic visualization. Two other Chicago-area schools made the list: Northwestern University at fortieth and the University of Chicago at twenty-first. Rankings were based on state-ofthe-art technology, advanced research facilities, faculty awards, entrepreneurial alumni, groundbreaking research, and original approaches.
Master’s Online Program Ranks High in 2015
WBEZ Worldview Features Computer Science Professor
U.S. News & World Report ranked the UIC Master of Engineering Online Program twenty-ninth in the country for best graduate online engineering programs, up from forty-first in 2013. “The program provides a much needed service to students who cannot access live education because of work commitments, geographical location, or physical disability,” says Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Associate Dean Piergiorgio Uslenghi, PhD, who has led the program since its beginning in 2000. The program serves approximately 100 students per semester and, in addition to the master’s degree, offers certificates in bioinformatics, law and management, electromagnetic technology, and wireless communications. A new certificate on disaster management will be added in the fall of 2015.
In February, Tanya Berger-Wolf, PhD, Professor of Computer Science, was interviewed on WBEZ’s Worldview about the Great Zebra & Giraffe Count, which took place March 1-2 at the Nairobi National Park in Kenya. The project, led by BergerWolf, encouraged park goers to photograph zebras and giraffes during their visit
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to help create a big-picture view of giraffe and zebra populations. These crowd-sourced photos were gathered and then analyzed with IBEIS (ImageBased Ecological Information System), the computational software that Berger-Wolf design-directed to study population biology.
Distinguished Researcher of the Year
Krishna Reddy, PhD
The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research named Krishna Reddy, PhD, professor, Department of Civil & Materials Engineering, a Distinguished Researcher for UIC’s Researcher of the Year Awards, recognizing his work throughout 2014. Professor Reddy heads both the Sustainable Engineering Research Laboratory and Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering Laboratory, focusing on confronting emerging environmental challenges in waste management using innovative approaches. In addition to NSF support, Professor Reddy has collaborated with the Chicago Park District and Argonne National Laboratory.
Engineering World Health Projects Help Developing World Support from the College’s Annual Fund sent two members of the student chapter of Engineering World Health (EWH) and faculty advisor Miiri Kotche, PhD, professor of bioengineering, to a Vietnamese children’s hospital in March. They worked with the International Pediatric Specialists Alliance for the Children of Vietnam to evaluate ways to address sanitary needs through low-cost medical technology. They hope to create a laminar flow hood to reduce contamination when mixing medications and handling infectious agents. In December, the group held a fundraiser supported by Chicago-based alternative rock band Wilco, which helped fund medical device-building projects that EWH members organize and complete.
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Around the College New Leadership at the University ■ On
November 19, 2014, Timothy Killeen, PhD, was introduced at UIC as the twentieth presidentdesignate of the University of Illinois. Killeen, who begins his Timothy Killeen, PhD appointment on July 1, 2015, previously served as president of the Research Foundation of the State University of New York. He earned his PhD in atomic and molecular physics from University College London and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. ■ Michael
D. Amiridis, PhD, UIC’s new chancellor, was first introduced to the campus community at a welcome event in Student Center East on December 18, 2014. Amiridis, a Michael D. Amiridis, PhD first-generation college graduate, earned his chemical engineering degrees from Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki in Greece (BS) and the University of Wisconsin–Madison (PhD). He has served as provost and as professor, department head, and dean of engineering at the University of South Carolina.
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Distinguished Lecture Series
As part of a new Distinguished Lecture Series, the College has hosted seven lectures on campus in the program’s first year, bringing to students a unique opportunity to learn from and engage in discussion with experts in a wide range of engineering fields. Guests have included: ■ John Tracy, chief technology officer of the Boeing Company ■ Rosemarie Andolino, commissioner
of the Chicago Department of Aviation ■ Joseph Shacter, former director
of public and intermodal
UIC Professor’s Bio-Robot in the News Chemical engineering professor Vikas Berry’s research on robotic germs has received wide media attention. Using nanotechnology, he and his team at UIC have created a bio-robot—a bacterial spore covered in graphene quantum dots—to sense humidity. They call it NERD, for Nano-Electro-Robotic Device. The researchers see applications for the device in situations that require low humidity
transportation for Illinois Department of Transportation ■ Alan Schriesheim, president of
Chicago Council on Science and Technology and director emeritus of Argonne National Laboratory ■ Thomas Powers, water
commissioner for the City of Chicago ■ Michael Masters, executive
director of the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management ■ Roger Liew, senior vice president
and chief technology officer for Orbitz Worldwide
levels, for example, to prevent erosion or food spoilage. “It’s also important in space applications, where any change in humidity could signal a leak,” Berry said. In addition to the Wall Street Journal, which featured the study in their research and development section, their work has been covered in the National Science Foundation’s Science 360, Nature Scientific Reports, redOrbit, gizmag, and ExtremeTech. :
…for being part of the equation! Remaining a leader in engineering education and research takes a commitment from our many stakeholders. Thanks to all of the alumni, faculty, staff, and many friends who help UIC engineering students— whether through mentoring and career recruitment, by teaching and advising, or by providing financial support. Your contributions of all sorts ensure that students receive the education they need today to solve many of the world’s complex problems tomorrow. We appreciate your continued generosity. To make a donation to the College’s annual fund, visit engineering.uic.edu and click on “Giving to the College” or call (312) 996-9422.
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“I
t’s a great way to give them an equal chance, a space where they can be free to explore their interests,” says UIC industrial engineering student Jillian Economy, who mentors girls in the Engineering Club of the Arnett C. Lines Elementary School to encourage them in their math and science skills.
To read Jillian’s story and other web stories, visit www.engineering.uic.edu. Stay connected to the College of Engineering www.facebook.com/engineering.uic www.twitter.com/UICEngineering www.flickr.com/photos/uic_engineering www.youtube.com/UICengineering