plans to develop a new senior-level course based on her nanotechnology research for drug delivery, advising undergraduate research projects in the area of manufacturing nanomaterials, and mentoring senior design projects. But she is also looking beyond UIC’s undergraduate needs. Professor Liu
taught introductory nanoscale science and engineering at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry through their Science Minor Program. She also attends the annual AIChE Chicago Section High School Symposium and has direct contact with teachers and counselors from Chicago public schools with high populations of underrepresented minority students. Professor Kanich is reaching out by developing a professional development course for middle and high school teachers to give them a deeper understanding of online safety and privacy. He is also working with the local American Civil Liberties Union to host local privacy awareness events that use novel approaches like live demonstrations of a hypothetical cybercriminal stalking a victim. “My aim is to help the public more fully understand the capabilities of online attackers so that everyone can protect their privacy and identity online.”
Ying Liu, PhD, assistant professor of chemical engineering, was awarded a five-year $400,163 NSF CAREER grant. She studies the competitive kinetics required to design, optimize, and consistently generate polymeric nanoparticles that encapsulate drugs incapable of dissolving in water, so that they can be delivered with maximum efficiency.
With an NSF CAREER grant, new professors can aim high and simultaneously make a significant impact in their research field, enhance student learning, and positively affect the broader community. Whether one of these grants gives a professor the opportunity to build original technology, make advances in a current field, or develop an entirely new one, it opens doors to creating a better, richer world. :
The College’s NSF CAREER Winners Within the last twenty years, twenty-eight UIC College of Engineering faculty members have received an NSF CAREER grant. And the number seems only to be increasing—ten have received awards in the past six years. Prith Banerjee, 1987 Ludwig Nitsche, 1994 Isabel Cruz, 1996 Piotr Gmytrasiewicz, 1997 Thomas Royston, 1998 Ashfaq Khokhar, 1999 Ajay Kshemkalyani, 1999 John Lillis, 1999 Derong Liu, 1999 Farzad Mashayek, 1999 Daniel Bernstein, 2000 Milos Zefran, 2001 Barbara Di Eugenio, 2002 Jie Liang, 2002 Sudip Mazumder, 2003 Karl Rockne, 2004 Bhaskar DasGupta, 2005 Laxman Saggere, 2005 Daniela Tuninetti, 2006 Randall Meyer, 2008 Tanya Berger-Wolf, 2008 Venkat Venkatakrishnan, 2009 Carmen Lilley, 2009 Zhichun Zhu, 2010 Natasha Devroye, 2011 Wenjing Rao, 2012 Jakob Eriksson, 2012 Ying Liu, 2014 Chris Kanich, 2014
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