CME Alumni Newsletter - Spring 2017

Civil and Materials

ENGINEERING

Alumni Newsletter - Spring 2017

Chicago’s Research University

IN THIS ISSUE • • • •

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Mohammadian Named New Department Head Burke Engineering Donates Trailer to ASCE 2017 Senior Design Expo Winners ASCE Nabs Two Wins at the Great Lakes Student Competition CME Students Winning Scholarships Student Snapshot: Ramin Shabanpour

Message from the DEPARTMENT HEAD

The Adventure of Life’s Changes in Engineering

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elcome to the Department of Civil and Materials Engineering Spring 2017 Newsletter.

As you can see, there has been a change in leadership in CME. Without change, there is no adventure in life. And the spring semester was quite an adventure.

Before we dive into the success of or students and faculty, I would like to thank my colleague and friend Professor Karl Rockne for his leadership. The department has grown significantly under his guidance and this newsletter will show the impact he had on everyone.

We’ve seen a lot of success this past semester and it is truly one to celebrate.

On the faculty side, several new research grants were awarded to our faculty. Professor of Practice Christopher Burke continues to go above and beyond with the generous donation of a trailer to ASCE, and Professor Krishna Reddy welcomed a Fulbright Scholar into his laboratory.

CME students have had a successful semester as they won awards and competitions.

A team of students won second place overall during UIC’s College of Engineering’s Senior Design Expo.

The members of ASCE captured two wins and fourth place overall at the annual Great Lakes Student Conference.

Additionally, the ITE UIC chapter won all three awards during a competition. There is much more and I hope you enjoy the great news.

We have more stories than we can fit in a newsletter and I am excited to share even more great news in our Fall 2017 newsletter.

Department Head and Professor Abolfazl Mohammadian

“We earned first place in the Environmental Competition and the Mystery Design Competition.

Both our concrete canoe and our steel bridge had solid performances this weekend.”

Diana Briones, President of ASCE UIC Read the full story and see more pctures

Regards,

on Pages 8 and 9.

Abolfazl Mohammadian, Professor and Department Head

Connect with alumni and students on 2

CME Faculty HIGHLIGHTS

Professor Mohammadian Appointed Department Head; Professor Rockne Honored for His Years of Leadership Professor Abolfozl “Kouros” Mohammadian has been appointed the new Head of UIC’s Department of Civil and Materials Engineering. His appointment started on Jan. 1, 2017. As the department head, Mohammadian will lead a department of 25 faculty members, eight full-time staff members, and continuously growing student body.

Mohammadian started his career in CME in 2002 as an assistant professor. He was named an associate professor in 2008, and was named a professor in 2013. As a faculty member, he served as the department’s Director of Graduate Studies, and he continues to serve as the associate director of the Center for Supply Chain Management and Logistics.

During his tenure at UIC, the prolific professor has won numerous teaching, research, and advising awards from the university and professional organizations. He is a member of multiple scientific and professional societies, and his research has been published in a wide-variety of journals. He is the director of the department’s TransLab, where his research experience and interests are focused primarily on transportation planning and travel behavior analysis, goods movement and logistics, travel survey and data mining, and applied econometrics and choice.

“This is a very exciting time for the Civil and Materials Engineering department, and a great opportunity to build upon Professor Rockne’s work,” said Mohammadian. “I

know there’s a lot of work to be done, but that has never stopped me before.”

Mohammadian’s predecessor Professor Karl Rockne, who is the director of the Eco-hydrology and Environmental Biotechnology Laboratory, successfully led the department for nearly three years. During his tenure the department added several new faculty members and student enrollment was dramatically increased.

“We also need to express our deep and heartfelt thanks to Professor Karl Rockne for his strong and untiring leadership as interim head,” said Dean Pete Nelson, of the College of Engineering. “The department has made some remarkable progress over the last years while Karl has led the CME Department.”

Learn more about CME’s new department head at Mohammadian Profile.

Burke Engineering Helping ASCE Students Get Around Professor of Practice Christopher Burke is dedicated to seeing CME succeed in many ways. He contributes the department as a member of CPEPAC, by hiring interns and graduates at his business, and as a donor.

Recently, he took another step toward supporting students. His company, Christopher B. Burke Engineering, donated a trailer to ASCE to help the student safely transport materials - like concrete canoes and steel bridges - to competitions.

“They would come to the CEPAC (meetings) over the last couple of years, and they always had a need for a trailer,” said Burke. “When they were transporting the concrete canoe or steel bridge a few years ago it broke because they had rented some other type of trailer. So they asked for it, and we bought it. And they did the wrap. They need it for their competitions.”

Last year, Burke endowed a professorship in CME. The Christopher B. and Susan S. Burke Professorship will be the first endowed professorship in the department.

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Research NEWS

Fulbright Scholar Joins Professor Reddy’s Team

By David Staudacher, UIC

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ME Professor Krishna Reddy is passionate about his research on environmental remediation engineering.

And it is this passion and expertise that piqued the interest of Dr. Claudio Cameselle and led him to UIC. Cameselle, who is an associate professor at the University of Vigo in Spain, was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and reached out to Reddy to work with him in his lab at UIC. The Fulbright Scholarship is an extremely competitive, merit based scholarship that provides international education grants for students and faculty members. Receiving the scholarship is an honor, and hosting a scholar is a tremendous compliment.

“Fulbright is a very prestigious scholarship. Somebody with that scholarship must be really talented and vetted through the scholarship review process,” said Reddy, who is the director of CME’s Sustainable Engineering Research Laboratory and Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering Laboratory.

“Selecting me and this university is a privilege. They could have gone to more places, but we came out to be on top. That really gives a little more satisfaction to what we are doing and the importance of our work is being recognized.”

“The basic idea is to work and learn about new technologies in soil remediation and green technologies,” said Cameselle. “I think this was a good destination to learn.

I contacted Professor Reddy and we’ve been discussing what we can do - we share some common interests - and I thought it was a good idea to come to Chicago.”

The three-month collaboration will provide both researchers with the chance to learn from one another and bring new ideas to their research.

“He has an interesting background. He has a more environmental and chemical engineering background,” said Reddy. “I look at things from a civil and environmental engineering perspective and maybe he can add on more chemical and bioengineering perspectives. I think he will complement our ongoing research to develop green and sustainable environmental remediation technologies.”

Cameselle is also excited about the joint effort and looks forward to learning from Reddy.

“The group here is very active and Professor Reddy has very clever ideas,” said Cameselle. “I think I’m going to learn

CME Professor Krishna Reddy (left) and Dr. Claudio Cameselle, of the University of Vigo in Spain starting a three-month research partnership at UIC. Cameselle is a Fulbright Scholar who chose CME for his advance his research. Photo by David Staudacher, UIC

more [from him], but we can learn from each other.”

While the pair are only working together for few months, they both have grand ideas for a long-term alliance and research that can be applied to problems around the world.

“I think this will provide me with the opportunity to learn about the research going on in Spain or other parts of Europe,” said Reddy. “However, my research can be made more broadly applicable, not only here, but in Europe and other places.”

“I’m looking forward to the next three months being productive for both of us,” he added. “We should be able to do a lot together.”

Learn more about Professor Reddy and his research at http://geotech.lab.uic.edu.

“The basic idea is to work and learn about new technologies in soil remediation and green technologies. I think this was a good destination to learn. I contacted Professor Reddy and we’ve been discussing what we can do - we share some common interests - and I thought it was a good idea to come to Chicago.”

Dr. Claudio Cameselle, Fulbright Scholar from the University of Vigo

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Associate Professor Didem Ozevin works on research addressing the “business problem” of weld quality assurance by developing a combined real-time diagnosis, decision, and control system based on multi-sensor fusion and machine learning methodology.

Photo by David Staudacher, UIC

Research NEWS

CME Faculty Researching Real-Time Weld Quality

By David staudacher, UIC

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elding often occurs late in the manufacturing process, but it is still a crucial part of the procedure. A defective weld can have significant negative impacts, but consistent and accurate fabrication in industries like aerospace, automotive, energy, shipbuilding, and many more is important to keep project costs low and ensure they are completed on time.

“Real time process control is critical for avoiding these defects, which include lack of penetration, undercutting, slag entrapment, crater cracks, and burn through,” said Associate Professor Didem Ozevin, of the Department of Civil and Materials Engineering (CME).

Ozevin is leading a team of UIC researchers and industrial partners whose research will address the “business problem” of weld quality assurance by developing a combined real-time diagnosis, decision, and control system based on multi-sensor fusion and machine learning methodology.

“The multi-sensor platform will incorporate miniaturized probes and control electronics into an autonomous and miniaturized robotic system that will carry the probes and micro-controller to collect and analyze the data, and to track the path of the weld electrode during the process,” said Ozevin, who is the director of the Non-Destructive Structures laboratory at UIC. “Since local features can impact welding quality, a high-resolution image of the welding area will be drawn out.”

The sensor system forming the nondestructive

evaluation of the welding process will encompass thermal imaging, acoustic sensing and ultrasonics. The data analytics representing the weld state and abnormalities in the process will be extracted from the sensor outputs as well as the parameters related to welding operation including voltage, current intensity, weld speed, and temperature.

The machine learning approach will analyze the data analytics during the process, and feed into the welding process to correct the errors in the welding parameters.

The data will be stored in a cloud-base station to compute performance analytics of the welding and for daily recalibration of the control algorithm.

“The major technology innovation of the proposed research is that a welding machine will be able to make intelligent decisions in response to process variables, disturbances, and tool deteriorations without any need of specialized engineering expertise as the decision will be automated using the cloud database,” she said.

Ozevin is the principal investigator of a $402,000 grant from UI-LABS DMDII (total funding $1,101,846 with 50% cost sharing), which is making the two-year project research possible. She is teaming up with UIC researchers Ernesto Indacochea and Sybil Derrible, both of CME, Brian Ziebart, of UIC’s Department of Computer Science, and industrial partners Industrial Measurement Systems and Illinois Tool Works.

Learn more about Professor Ozevin and her research at Ozevin Profile.

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28th Annual Engineering SENIOR DESIGN EXPO

CME Team Wins Second Place Overall

The team of Stephen Lashock (from left), Michael Anzalone, Mary Cunningham, Yousef Dana, and Garrett Golden won second place overall during the 28th Annual UIC Engineering Senior Design Expo for their project Grant Park Reef Trail.

and tourists. The students proposed a modernized, two-tier path separating the speeding bikers and pedestrians has been designed. The design also includes more handicapped accessible features, a new seawall along the lake, and the creation of an artificial reef.

With guidance from Philip Willink, the Shedd Aquarium’s lead researcher, the reef is designed us-ing recycled materials acquired on site, which will help promote marine life and attract recreational fishing.

Major benefits of this project include increased user satisfaction, safety, eco-friendliness and economic growth from increased usage. The Grant Park Reef Trail will be a contemporary destination for Chicago residents and tourists.

“I am thrilled to see the Grant Park Reef Trail project receive this recognition,” said CME Clinical Assistant Professor Joseph Schulenberg, who was the team’s faculty advisor. “The team was able to combine two unique aspects, the reclaimed material reef and the use of virtual reality.

Additionally the project is implementable and serves a real need. I feel that the use of virtual reality could very well become a new standard in communicating complex projects

By David Staudacher, UIC

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team of CME students won second place overall at the 28th Annual UIC Engineering Senior Design Expo on April 21, 2017 at the UIC Forum, 725 W. Roosevelt Road, Chicago.

The team of Mike Anzalone, Mary Cunningham, Yousef Dana, Garret Golden and Stephen Lashock won the Silver Award, which had a prize of $2,000, with their project Grant Park Reef Trail, which used virtual reality during their presentation.

The group also won a Globe Award in the Infrastructure Improvement category. The expo was made up of 130 projects, which were presented by more than 500 students competing in five categories.

The goal of the Grant Park Reef Trail project is to renovate Monroe Harbor to become a positive addition to the existing trail along Lake Michigan, which is one of Chicago’s greatest attractions. In its current state, Monroe Harbor appears to be unsafe due to excessive deteriorating concrete and heavy traffic from runners, walkers, bicyclists 6

to clients and stakeholders. I was truly impressed with the work the group did.”

“I took the advising role that if the students needed help, they knew that they could ask,” added Schulenberg. “With my work with the Corps of Engineers, I was able to provide information regarding similar projects to help them with scope and layout.”

The team also were advised by Dritan Shehi, a professional engineer at Collins Engineering, Inc., who worked on The 606 trail in Chicago. He meet with the team often and ensured the project was detailed and well thought out.

Another key element to the team’s success was its diverse mix of skill sets, and the ability to work with people in a research laboratory in the College of Engineering.

“We have diverse passions ranging from transportation, structural, and environmental engineering, to fishing and video game making,” said Dana. “Each of us used these strong interests and skills to contribute to the project. Additionally, we had great help from those outside the project group. We worked extensively with UIC’s Electronic Visualization Lab to create a virtual reality model for our proposed trail.”

Preparing engineers to succeed in the real world is the end goal for all of the students in the College of Engineering. The students demonstrated a wide-variety of engineering projects, which demanded strong skills and the ability to work in a team environment. And the Grant Park Reef Trail team is only one example of the how UIC is preparing tomorrow’s engineers.

“The entire expo experience was very rewarding,” said Dana. “We knew we had something special with the virtual reality.

Given the amount of hours and effort the team collectively put forth, we were really excited to hear our project announced twice during the award ceremony. More importantly, we were really happy that we were able to effectively present all of our project ideas and goals.”

Additional projects to win Globe Awards included LEED the WAY and Scaling up Aquaponics in Chicago with Replicable Urban Farms. Second Place Honorable Mention projects were Design and Analysis of a Cross-Laminated Timber Building, Science Technology Engineering & Mathematics Center, and Thermo-Drone.

CME Professor Ben O’Connor reviews the Grant Park Reef Trail project during the Expo.

A CME student explains the project Scaling up Aquaponics in Chicago with Replicable Urban Farms to an expo visitor. The students were awarded a Globe Award for their project.

Madhu Jaisimha, Preetha Narayanan and Huanghe Hu won a Globe Award for their project LEED the WAY.

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Great Lakes STUDENT CONFERENCE

ASCE Team Nabs Two Wins at Annual Conference

By David Staudacher, UIC

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IC’s student chapter of ASCE bounced back to the top of the rankings at the recent the Great Lakes Student Conference in Wisconsin. After a rough 2016 performance, UIC placed fourth overall – out of 19 school – during the conference on March 30 to April 1 at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) members competed against 18 universities during the annual conference, which is made up of schools from northern and central Illinois, southern Wisconsin, and Indiana, and it is one of the largest regions based on number of schools.

The schools competed in a set of eight Civil Engineering-based competitions. The UIC team won two the eight competitions and made significant advances in the highly-competitive Concrete Canoe and Steel Bridge competitions.

“We earned first place in the Environmental Competition and the Mystery Design Competition,” said Diana Briones, president of ASCE UIC. “Both our concrete canoe and our steel bridge had solid performances this weekend.”

The Environmental Competition team worked closely with Professor Khodadoust for several weeks before the conference to prepare for the competition and was made up of Haley Wittenkeller, Yousef Dana, Qudus Lawal, Jonathan Diaz, and Mandy Carlson. The Mystery Design team, which UIC also won first place in 2016, consisted of Nalin Naranjo, Gerardo Licon, Austin Bernat, Andrew Boysen, and Christopher Porter.

While the team did not advance to the national competition with its canoe or bridge, the members are excited about the advancements they made at the regional level and the input that came from younger students.

“The competition was different from last year in a positive way where our bridge did not break and our canoe did not crack,” added Katarzyna Sitko, ASCE UIC vice president. “We were constantly supporting each other throughout the day. Communication throughout the group was constant and no one got left out.”

“We performed better than last year and we had more underclassmen involved in the competitions,” said Briones. “We all worked together to support each other at the different competitions. I learned that having fun and enjoying the experience of competing is more valuable than any awards we could receive.”

Being well prepared, working as a team, and enjoying the experience is very important for the team if they want to compete better next year. This is more important than ever as UIC is slated to host the 2018 ASCE Great Lakes Student Conference in Chicago.

“This will be a huge undertaking and we are expecting to host about 550 participants,” said Briones.

Learn more about UIC’s ASCE chapter at ASCE-UIC. 8

The Environmental Competition team proudly show off their first-place award at the conference. The team is made up of Haley Wittenkeller, Yousef Dana, Qudus Lawal, Jonathan Diaz, and Mandy Carlson. Photos courtesy of ASCE.

The Mystery Design team took the top spot for the second consecutive year. The team consisted of Nalin Naranjo, Gerardo Licon, Austin Bernat, Andrew Boysen, and Christopher Porter.

Above, members of the UIC Steel Bridge team show off their bridge during the ASCE Great Lakes Student Conference hosted at the Milwaukee School of Engineering in Wisconsin.

At left, the team take the center stage as they prepare to build their bridge. Below, the students work as a team during the competition.

Above, members of the concrete canoe team get ready to race the canoe during the competition.

At left, the UIC team show off the concreate canoe while working at UIC.

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STUDENT NEWS

Three CME Students Sweep Institute of Transportation Engineers Scholarships

By David Staudacher, UIC

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he ITE UIC Chapter is in its first year as a student organization and the members are quickly making a name for themselves as they swept all three awards at the Institute of Transportation Engineers-Illinois Section Scholarship at Carlucci Rosemont in January.

The annual banquet also marked the organization’s 50th Anniversary of Illinois Section.

Nabin Kafle took home the “Graduate Scholarship Award 2016,” Nima Golshani received the “Best Student Paper Award 2016,” and Yousef Dana nabbed the “Undergraduate Scholarship Award 2016.” The UIC students beat out students from universities throughout Illinois.

“It was a great honor to receive the 2016 Graduate Scholarship Award,” said Nabin Kafle, president of the UIC ITE Chapter.

“More than winning the award for myself I am delighted to know that all three awards were bagged by UIC students. As a President of the newly revived ITE-UIC Chapter, I think this was a big start for the Chapter. I hope this will spur more graduate and undergraduate students toward Transportation Engineering.”

“This is a demonstration of how excellent our students are, and their excellent work in research and their enthusiasm and passion for the transportation engineering field,” said MIE Professor Bo Zou, who is the faculty advisor for the ITE UIC chapter. “There are many recent innovations and it is very exciting time in the transportation field with all of these technology advances.”

“UIC provides a world-class program in Transportation Engineering,” said Kafle. “With the excellent faculty advisors and research infrastructures, Transportation Engineers from UIC have continuously marked their presence in the various fields from research to job industries. I believe UIC is preparing its student for the working world in every field.”

The ILITE scholarship opens every year during October and November. Learn more about ITE-UIC, scholarships in the field of transportation, and events at http://ite.group. uic.edu.

Nabin Kalfe accepts the Graduate Schoalrship Award from Craig Jakobsen, Director of Student Affairs for 2016 Illinois Section of the Institute of Transportation Engineers-Illinois Section during the awards ceremony. Photos courtesy of UIC ITE Chapter.

Yousef Dana (left) and Nima Golshani show off their awards during the event.

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Student NEWS

Two Students Awarded Chicago Consular Corps Scholarships

By David Staudacher, UIC

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wo students from the Department of Civil and Materials Engineering were awarded Chicago Consular Corps Scholarship for the academic year 2016-2017 from UIC’s Office of International Affairs (OIA).

Civil Engineering students Negar Kamali Zonouzi and Herbert Nuwaba were honored at OIA’s award ceremony on Nov. 17 at UIC. The ceremony marked the Chicago Consular Corps Scholarship’s 10th anniversary at UIC. The students are two of only 15 successful applicants university-wide who were “favorably reviewed” and awarded the $1,000 scholarship.

They also are among the thirteen UIC international degree seeking students who were awarded the scholarships.

Two scholarships were awarded to full-time, degree seeking American students. Eligibility for the scholarship is limited to students who have a minimum cumulative UIC GPA of 3.5 (on a 4-point scale).

Zonouzi, of Iran, is working on her Ph.D., under the direction of Professor Sheng-Wei Chi in the Computational Mechanics Laboratory.

“Negar is a disciplined, mature, and intelligent graduate student. She excelled in classes and has substantial research accomplishments. Additional to classroom work and research, Negar Kamali has been actively mentoring undergraduate research,” said Chi. “She has well-rounded personality and kindness to help others. She is passionate to engage with women’s engineering society despite her already over-loaded duties and research activities. She is always eager to share her own experiences without reservation to women students in STEP in regards to classroom study and research.”

She is one of three students in Chi’s lab, and the second in his group to win the scholarship. Thanakorn Siriakorn won the same scholarship last year.

Nuwaba, of Uganda, is an undergraduate student pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Civil

“Negar is a disciplined, mature, and intelligent graduate student. She excelled in classes and has substantial research accomplishments. Additional to classroom work and research, Negar Kamali has been actively mentoring undergraduate research.”

Professor Sheng-Wei Chi, Director of CME’s Computational Mechanics Laboratory.

Engineering. He recently completed a summer internship in a research laboratory at UIC where he worked with graduate student Nima Golshani.

“Doing research is something I love partly because my dad is a botanist and, so I grew up in a research environment,” said Nuwaba. “I’m Interested in a challenging position in a high-quality engineering environment where my resourceful experience and academic skills will 11

add value to the organization and eventually help me improve the third world country infrastructure.

I felt that research helped me gain experience on how I could possibly improve evacuation systems in third world countries like Uganda where I grew up.”

More information about the Office of International Affairs and the Chicago Consular Corps Scholarship can be found at https://oia.uic.edu/ chicago-consular-corps-scholarship.

Ramin Shabanpour is one of only four student to win the Pre-Doctoral Fellowship Competition presented by UIC’s Institute for Environmental Science and Policy. Photos courtesy of Ramin Shabanpour.

CME STUDENT SNAPSHOT

Ph.D. Student Wins Pre-Doctoral Fellowship Competition

By David Staudacher, UIC

“It has been an absolute

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pleasure to know and to

ME student Ramin Shabanpour is having a great year. The Ph.D. candidate in Transportation Engineering is one of only four student to win the Pre-Doctoral Fellowship Competition presented by UIC’s Institute for Environmental Science and Policy (IESP).

Shabanpour, who is advised by CME Department Head Abolfazl Mohammadian, won the fellowship in August for his research project “Assessing Environmental Impacts of Connected Autonomous Vehicle Technologies.” The research seeks to better understand the potential impacts of emerging Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) technology on people travel behavior, traffic conditions, and subsequently its environmental implications and energy consumption.

His research grew out of my participation in the project “Developing a Baseline National Platform to Analyze CAV Scenarios,” which was funded by

work with Ramin. He is one of the UIC’s finest.

Ramin embodies all of the characteristics that separate a top doctorate student from others.”

Abolfazl Mohammadian, CME Department Head

Argonne National Laboratory.

The mission of the IESP pre-doctoral fellowship program is to span traditional boundaries among disciplines while helping students develop knowledge and skills for independent research on the fundamental questions of the present and the future.

The fellowship program is open to any pre-doctoral student at UIC whose research is related to interdisciplinary 12

environmental scholarship. Each fellowship carries with it an award of up to $15,000.

“It has been an absolute pleasure to know and to work with Ramin.

He is one of the UIC’s finest,” said Professor Mohammadian. “Ramin embodies all of the characteristics that separate a top doctorate student from others. He has an exceptional work ethic, a great passion to learn, an insatiable curiosity, boundless energy, and of course the love of research challenges. Ramin is truly a leader in helping others learn, mentoring several other graduate students.

His modesty and appreciation for the opportunities at UIC are qualities that I find endearing.”

Additionally, Shabanpour recently won the “George Krambles Transportation Scholarship” from UIC Urban Transportation Center and the “David Boyce Graduate Award” from CME Department.

More student, faculty and department news can be found at www. cme.uic.edu.