Summer 2012 - Civil and Environmental Engineering

Transcription

CEE
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Summer 2012
Energized
The nexus of water, energy and the environment
Alumni news and features
CEE
Excellence.
Flexibility.
Illinois.
CEE at Illinois Online
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Earn your master’s degree entirely online.
Work with our top-ranked faculty.
Take the same classes as resident students.
Interact with other students through projects and
assignments.
Earn the same M.S. degree with the same degree
requirements as on-campus students.
Access lectures and course materials online.
Work toward professional development hours and
certificates.
Enjoy the flexibility and convenience of an online
program.
Professional Development Hours,
Certificates
You can register as a non-degree student for a
single course or pursue a 3-course certificate as
a non-degree student. Afterwards, you can apply
for the M.S. program and transfer up to 12 hours
(3 courses) to be used toward your 36-hour M.S.
degree program requirement.
cee.illinois.edu/ceeonline
CEE
CEE is
is published
published twice
twice aa year
year for
for alumni
alumni
and
friends
of
the
Department
and friends of the Department of
of Civil
Civil and
and
Environmental
Engineering
at
the
Environmental Engineering at the University
University
of
of Illinois
Illinois at
at Urbana-Champaign.
Urbana-Champaign. Those
Those
alumni
who
alumni who donate
donate annually
annually to
to CEE
CEE at
at
Illinois
Illinois receive
receive every
every issue.
issue.
Amr
Amr S.
S. Elnashai
Elnashai
Professor
Professor and
and Head
Head
John
John E.
E. Kelley
Kelley
Director
Director of
of Advancement
Advancement and
and
Alumni
Relations
Alumni Relations
Celeste
Celeste Bragorgos
Bragorgos
Director
Director of
of Communications
Communications
Breanne
Breanne Ertmer
Ertmer
External
External Relations
Relations Coordinator
Coordinator
Letters, comments and editorial submissions:
Letters, comments and editorial submissions:
CEE Magazine
CEE Magazine
Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering
Engineering
1117 Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory
1210 Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory
MC-250
MC-250
205 North Mathews Avenue
Urbana, Illinois 61801
(217) 333-6955
(217) 333-6955
[email protected]
[email protected]
Advertising inquiries:
Advertising inquiries:
Celeste Bragorgos
Celeste Bragorgos
(217) 333-6955
(217) 333-6955
[email protected]
[email protected]
cee.illinois.edu
Front cover: Photo of the new M.T. Geoffrey Yeh
Cover Photo:
Student
Center, completed in June. Photo: Erich
istockphoto.com/ HansJoachim
Adickes
Follow CEE at Illinois:
facebook.com/ceeatillinois
twitter.com/ceeatillinois
youtube.com/ceeatillinois
CEE
Summer 2012
4 The building blocks of modern academic institutions/Amr S. Elnashai
7 Our mom is going to the spa/Lawrence P. Jaworski (BS 72, MS 73)
8 Energized: Special section on water, energy and the environment
9
New program: Energy-Water-Environment Sustainability
10 Kumar heading Indian water sustainability initiative
11 Mariñas to lead Safe Global Water Institute
12 Converting biomass into hydrocarbon fuel
13 Optimizing the location of biofuel production plants
15 Minimizing postharvest food loss
16 Innovating better wastewater treatment systems
17 Working toward water sustainability in the Middle East
18
18 Alumna visits Brazil for the U.S. state department
20 DOT establishes first-ever rail center in CEE
21 CEE alumnus conducts campus clock tours
21
22 Bridge team heads to nationals bigger, stronger
23 Canoe team floats light, aesthetic canoe
24 Global Leaders visit Australia
26 Department news
31 Old masters: Chester P. Siess
32 Student awards
34 Alumni news
38 In memoriam
40 Chicago alumni dinner
41 Alumni awards
42 To thy happy children of the future
12
11
Civil and Environmental Engineering Alumni Association—Summer 2012 3
The building blocks
of modern academic institutions
Amr S. Elnashai, Professor and Head
William J. and Elaine F. Hall Endowed Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering
by
W
hat distinguishes academic institutions in the short, medium and long
terms? Why do some universities rise and
overtake others? Why do some have sustained and others sporadic excellence? Is
hiring excellent professors the be-all and
end-all? Is it infrastructure, appeal to students, financial aid packages, advertising,
location?
Whereas industries of various types
have relatively straightforward, accessible and understandable business models,
hence their rise and fall are amenable to
modeling and to some extent prediction,
academic institutions, especially public
universities, have fiendishly complex operational models, or no model at all. In my
article of summer 2010 in this magazine, I
wrote, “The university is part corporation,
working in a very competitive environment; part government agency, heavily
regulated and controlled; part benevolent
organization, offering moral and practical
support to under-privileged individuals;
part social welfare organization, working
within communities to support prosperity and protect the environment; and part
sports organization, running leagues and
planning complex sporting events.” The
consequential complexity, or the non-existence, of a university operational model,
renders responding to the set of questions above quite challenging and uncertain. Finding or creating an operational
model for academic units that reside in
publicly-owned and run universities is an
elusive yet exceptionally worthwhile endeavor. How many publications deal with
university operational models? Compared to publications on business models for industries, very few. It therefore
behooves us in academe to read, under-
4
Visit CEE on the web at http://cee.illinois.edu
stand and project onto our organizations
the business literature; to create a lingua
franca for communication with the business world and among ourselves.
In their 1994 international best-seller
“Built to Last,” Jim Collins and Jerry Porras
studied many great companies and drew
lessons pertinent to their excellence.
Hearing constructive criticism of their
book — that it has focused exclusively
on born-to-greatness companies — they
embarked on a second research project
to analyze companies that made the leap
from “Good to Great,” which is the title of
Collins’ 2001 book. The book’s prologue
includes the statement “we don’t have
great schools, principally because we have
good schools.” This sobering thought has
driven the current leadership team of CEE
at Illinois to go to great lengths to adhere
to uncompromising excellence in every
aspect of operation during the economically tough years that we have witnessed.
The book concludes with seven common
features observed in great companies.
Comprehensively recasting these seven
features in an academic context would
take more than the space this article is
meant to occupy in the CEE magazine. I
will paraphrase and rearrange the seven
issues, adjusting them slightly to suit our
needs, leading to the following:
1. Establish leadership driven to do
what is best for the academy
2. Bring in exceptional people regardless of their specific sub-disciplines
3. Confront the brutal truths without despairing
4. Focus on three elements: in what
can we lead the world, what keeps us
going, what ensures solvency
5. Deploy the most up-to-date tech-
nology in support of the above three
elements
6. Adhere to the culture of excellence
7. Use multiple and simultaneous
initiatives to energize and invigorate
the academy
The above group of seven featurescum-recommendations is a feasible starting point which requires implementation
in a public university context, because
of the complexity, or absence, of an academic operational model. Below, I discuss each of the seven features of great
organizations, pointing out what we have
achieved and to what we aspire.
1. Establish leadership driven to do
what is best for the academy
This has always been a strength of our
department, whereby capable and inspiring leadership has led our path and guided our development. We need to train our
best research and education professors
in academic administration and share
with them decision-making so that the
stream of exceptional leaders continues.
We need to be liberal with providing college- and campus-level leaders from CEE
and not view such appointments as a loss
to the department, but rather as a very
substantial gain, and indeed recognition
of our professors as not only scholars but
also academic leaders.
2. Bring in exceptional people regardless of their specific sub-disciplines
We are starting to focus less on discipline and more on excellence in hiring
faculty, a new feature of the management
of the department that will bear fruit in
the next 5-10 years. Of course it is not easy
to define excellence, but with our department-wide search committee, it is clear
that those responsible for identifying
exceptional talent are succeeding, having hired six amazingly talented professors, and searching for three more. While
pursuing the goal of excellence-based
hiring, we also need to be mindful of our
educational needs and the expectations
from our students and our stakeholders.
We are currently implementing an Engineer in Residence program to ensure the
continued relevance of our educational
programs to the professions that depend
on our graduates, and we are looking into
positions of “professor-of-the-practice”
to complement our hiring of professors
working on the peripheries of traditional
areas.
3. Confront the brutal truths without despairing
There are not many brutal truths to
confront in our CEE universe, and there
is no reason to despair. There are however important realizations that we have
to account for, mainly that fundamental
discoveries in mature engineering disciplines such as civil and environmental
engineering are few, and breakthroughs
are far between. Consequently, funding
opportunities are a fraction of what they
were in the past. There are sub-disciplines
within civil and environmental engineering that call for reinvention and redeployment of research tools in, for example,
biosensing, nanoimaging, biomechanics,
and informational modeling. Examples of
higher-level challenges are dynamic systems interaction and optimization, and
adaptive smart infrastructure. We should
strategically invest in the new challenges
that derive from the pressing world problems and take advantage of new opportunities for integrative research and development.
4. Focus on three elements: in what
can we lead the world, what keeps us
going, what ensures solvency
We can lead the world in global and
interdisciplinary education and research,
noting that most of the similar-sized CEE
departments are somewhat lagging be-
In a longitudinal
study of student
satisfaction undertaken
for the College of
Engineering at Illinois,
and released in late
2011, CEE at Illinois
showed a unique and
substantial increase in
undergraduate student
satisfaction, compared
to the previous survey
in 2009.
hind in such an endeavor. What keeps us
going, which we must protect and safeguard, is the widespread recognition of
the Illinois brand for excellent engineering graduates at the bachelor’s and master’s levels, and the quality of our Ph.D.
students as future leaders in industry and
academe. Our current fiscal model is dependent on two main sources of income,
namely graduate tuition and indirect cost
recovery from research projects, with an
increasing income from a third source:
the generous contributions of our alumni
and friends. Therefore maximizing our
short-term income, which is the prelude
to maintain our innovation in education
and research thrusts, is dependent on
our securing a steady and reliable income
from these two sources, which in turn require concerted action to eliminate the
possible impact of serving a much larger
graduate program, and managing preand post- research grant business.
5. Deploy the most up-to-date technology in support of the above three
elements
Technology in education, through
the best-equipped laboratories and
classrooms and first-rate information
infrastructure, has always been a high
priority for our department and continues as such. We need to keep abreast of
emerging technologies in teaching, use
of multimedia, online and blended educational models, and constantly upgrade
our laboratories, both wet and simulation-based. Education and research in the
globally-connected and increasingly interdisciplinary world requires continued
investment in hands-on experiential education, and international outreach, both
of which have technology infrastructure
requirements that should be set at a high
priority.
6. Adhere to the culture of excellence
Many pressures are on a unit such as
the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering which may lead to lowering of standards. Some of these are, for
example, collaborative agreements with
partners that allow admission assessed
outside of the department, campus- or
University-level agreements that may bypass our rigorous admissions standards
via transferring students or faculty, administrative requirements that arise as a
consequence of hiring at the college or
campus level, and needs to support the
educational programs in the short-term
via hiring teaching faculty under pressures of time and/or the availability of faculty lines. We should resist such pressures
no matter how tempting, and instead opt
for short-term and reversible solutions
that address the immediate requirement
while developing a longer-term solution
that is true to our central value of excellence.
7. Use multiple and simultaneous
initiatives to energize and invigorate
the academy
In recent years, the department has
embraced and vigorously applied concepts of positive urgency to great effect.
Urgency was imposed on us through the
severe cuts in the summer and fall of 2009,
and the concurrent hiring freeze, followed
by the university-wide furlough program.
We have since embarked on positive encontinued on page 6
CEEAA Board of Directors
solidate strategic goals. We then articulate enabling actions that aim at impleergy enhancers, among which are plan- menting our strategy. Concurrently we
ning and follow-up retreats, external are recasting our expenditure onto the
reviews, reassessment of the budgeting strategic goals and thus redeploying our
framework, curriculum reviews, opinion resources in direct service of the strategy
surveys and extensive data collection and implementation plan. We then close the
comparisons with peers. In parallel, the loop by defining the metrics for success
effort of establishing new department- and mechanisms for corrective action as
wide cross-cutting structures has suc- needed. The new CEE at Illinois is manceeded thus far in building the new and aged in a deliberate manner that matches
exciting program on Sustainable and resource allocation with our strategic
Resilient Infrastructure Systems, which goals in education, research, service and
in turn has influenced the undergradu- governance. Our “operational model” is
ate and graduate curricula, hired the first the academic equivalent to an industrial
cohort of Ph.D. students, and launched a “business model.” We are well on our way
new seminar series
to defining this academic
and an international
equivalent to the indusexperience for our
The new CEE at trial counterpart that has
students. We are
us for many years,
Illinois is managed eluded
in the process of
a model that will enable us
in a deliberate to secure our lead in edulaunching the second program on
manner that matches cation, research and serEnergy, Water and
vice to the technical and
resource allocation professional communities.
Environment Sustainability, to be folwith our strategic The details of the academlowed shortly by the
model will
goals in education, icbe operational
third and last prothe subject of a future
research, service and article in this magazine.
gram on Risk Management. MaintainChuck Vest, President
governance.
ing positive urgency
of the National Academy
requires community
of Engineering, stated in
support, which is in our case a reality. Our his 2011 annual address that ”we are failretreats are a testament to our unity and ing in some combination of inspiration,
common purpose, our energy and our motivation, and learning,” to explain the
determination to remain ahead of the observation that roughly half of the enpack. Our retreats are inspiring events, gineering students leave the field during
where the faculty and senior staff discuss their university years. In a longitudinal
freely their aspirations and tell the leader- study of student satisfaction undertaken
ship of the department where they want for the College of Engineering at Illinois,
us to be.
and released in late 2011, CEE at Illinois
The next phase of our work is per- showed a unique and substantial increase
haps the most crucial in recent years. It in undergraduate student satisfaction,
is nothing less than developing a com- compared to the previous survey in 2009.
prehensive and novel operational model There is certainly no failing in this departfor academic units in public universities. ment, only pioneering steps to graduate
We are developing this model from the the civil and environmental engineers of
foundations of a singularly successful and the future, who will underpin prosperprosperous department. Our approach ity and wealth creation, while protecting
is to use our vision and strategy to con- and enhancing our planet’s ecosystem. i
Continued from page 5
6
President
Lawrence P. Jaworski, P.E., (BS 72, MS 73)
Brown and Caldwell
Beltsville, Maryland
Vice President
Tracy K. Lundin, P.E., (BS 80, MS 82)
Fermilab
Batavia, Illinois
Second Vice President
Allen J. Staron, P.E., (BS 74)
Clark Dietz Inc.
Chicago
Past President
Kenneth M. Floody, P.E., S.E. (BS 83)
Ingenii LLC
Oak Park, Illinois
Secretary
James M. LaFave (BS 86, MS 87)
Engineering, University of Illinois
Directors
Daniel F. Burke (BS 92, MS 93)
City of Chicago Department of Transportation
Chicago
David Byrd (BS 01, MS 06)
EFI Global Inc.
Addison, Illinois
Lynne E. Chicoine (BS 78, MS 80)
CH2M HILL
Portland, Oregon
Stanley M. Herrin, P.E., (BS 74, MS 78)
Crawford, Murphy & Tilly Inc.
Springfield, Illinois
Alan J. Hollenbeck, P.E., (BS 75, MS 77)
RJN Group Inc.
Wheaton, Illinois
Deron G. Huck, P.E., (BS 90)
CH2M HILL
Kansas City, Missouri
John P. Kos, P.E., (BS 77)
DuPage County
Wilbur C. Milhouse, P.E., (BS 94, MS 95)
Milhouse Engineering & Construction Inc.
Chicago
Paula C. Pienton (BS 85)
AECOM
Chicago
Frank Powers (BS 82, MS 83)
H.W. Lochner Inc.
Chicago
Colleen E. Quinn, P.E., (BS 84)
Ricondo & Associates Inc.
Chicago
Julian C. Rueda (BS 80, MS 82)
Geo Services Inc.
Naperville, Illinois
C. Wayne Swafford (BS 78, MS 82)
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc.
Oakland, California
Scott Trotter (BS 90)
Trotter and Associates Inc.
Saint Charles, Illinois
Our mom is going to the spa
By Lawrence P. Jaworski, P.E., (BS 72, MS 73)
President, CEE Alumni Association Board of Directors
M
ore about the title of this President’s
message later.
Lots of good stuff continues to happen around
campus and our department. The CEEAA board
had our winter meeting in Chicago in March. We
always combine this meeting with the annual
Alumni Dinner in Chicago, which includes the
alumni awards ceremony. We had a record
attendance this year and if you weren’t able
to make it, we hope you will plan to come next
year. This is a wonderful opportunity to catch
up on what’s happening with our department
and see old friends. This year’s awards ceremony
carried on the fine tradition of acknowledging
outstanding achievement by CEE alumni by
recognizing four Distinguished Alumni and one
Young Alumna. You can read about this year’s
award winners elsewhere in this edition of the CEE
magazine. We also received an update from our
department head, Amr Elnashai. The department
remains on strong foundations and has regained
our (deserved) ranking of number one for our
graduate civil engineering program. The ranking
for undergraduate programs will be out this fall,
and I’m thinking we’ll make it a clean sweep!
In other events, the spring job fair was held
on campus in late February. There were 62
companies there to try to choose among the
top CEE students in the country. The job fair is
now hosted twice a year. If you are interested in
recruiting our students, contact Breanne Ertmer,
[email protected], (217) 265-5426.
Hopefully, many of you were able to partake
of the first-ever CEE Beer Tasting at Revolution
Brewery in Chicago on May 22. Indeed, one of the
disadvantages of living on the East Coast is the
inability to make it back for key events like the
beer tasting! In addition, our second annual CEE
Golf Outing is scheduled for July 12 at Gleneagles
Country Club in Lemont. Last year’s participants
had a great time. In the category of future events,
the CEEAA Board will hold our fall meeting on
campus September 14, and many of us will stay
for the football game that Saturday, September
15. If you are going to be there for the game, look
us up — we’d love to see fellow alumni.
We have been in the Yeh Center for almost a
full academic year. As evidence of the critical
need for this facility, it is reported that the center
is already over capacity and some functions are
having to find other locations! In other news,
the department recently underwent a detailed
external review by a blue ribbon panel. The
findings of the panel support our standing as
the leading CEE department in the country.
To continue our tradition of excellence, an
Academic Advisory Board consisting of six
distinguished members has been established to
further academic standing. The professional M.S.
program continues to grow. From tuition income
in 2008–2009 of $36,000, the program has grown
to $1.7 million of income this academic year. The
online M.S. program is seeing similar growth and
now includes 20 courses. Finally, our department
is approaching having 52 professors — the
highest in many years!
So the department is in excellent shape and
continues its position as the top-ranked CEE
program. This continued excellence is due
to the dedication and very hard work of the
department staff under the direction of Professor
Elnashai. As I have come to know Amr since his
assuming the position as department head, I have
come to appreciate that his position is as much
business leader and fundraiser as it is academic
leader. Obviously, supporting Amr is the entire
department staff. My thanks and sincere
appreciation goes out to all of them.
Now, what about that title? As you might
be aware, our beloved Alma Mater is heading
for the spa. Yes, after more than 82 years, Alma
Mater will be removed for a much-needed major
refurbishment. After decades of being climbed
upon by students (including yours truly), she was
in need of repairs. Plans are that she will be back
in her spot welcoming us all to campus by May
2013.
And finally, all good things must come to
The department
remains on strong
foundations and
has regained
our (deserved)
ranking of
number one for
our graduate
civil engineering
program.
Continued on page 8
Civil and Environmental Engineering Alumni Association—Summer 2012
7
an end. This is my last article as
president of the CEEAA board. It
has been an honor for me to be
able to give something back to the
department and the University that
helped me achieve success in my
profession. As many of you know,
I live in the Washington, D.C., area
and don’t have many chances to
get back to Illinois and especially
to campus. Being able to visit the
campus during our board meetings
has been an absolute delight. A very
special thanks to all those board
members that I have had the good
fortune to work with these years. My
sincerest thanks to department staff
— John Kelley, Breanne Ertmer and
Celeste Bragorgos — for all the help
provided over the years. And finally,
thank you to all the department
heads with whom I have come
in contact — Amr, Bob, Nick and
Dave — for making this department
the best in the country. I urge
you to consider stepping up your
support to our department. Attend
the Alumni Dinner in Chicago,
contribute financial support, and
consider volunteering to serve on
the CEEAA board. I guarantee it
will be one of the most rewarding
experiences of your life.
Until we meet again, go Illini!i
Are you interested in
serving on the CEE
Alumni Association
Board of Directors?
Application available online
at cee.illinois.edu/alumni. For
more information, contact
John Kelley, Director of Advancement, jekelley@illinois.
edu, (217) 333-5120.
8
Energized
I
ncreasingly, CEE at Illinois is focusing its research and
instruction on multidisciplinary, global research projects and instructional programs that address three of
society’s most pressing civil engineering challenges: renewal of the infrastructure; the nexus of water, energy
and the environment; and the management of risk to society from natural and human-made disasters.
Researchers in the department are conducting innovative research with the power to address these challenges and, through instructional innovations, are preparing students to be leaders with the knowledge and
vision to meet them. On the next few pages, we focus on
just a sampling of the work being done in the area of the
nexus of water, energy and the environment.
Energy and water are at the heart of our economy
and way of life. Energy production requires a reliable,
abundant and predictable source of water. At the same
time, the energy required for the treatment and delivery
of water accounts for as much as 80 percent of its cost.
While the interrelationship of water and energy is critical, there are also potentially devastating environmental
impacts at all stages of energy production and water development.
CEE researchers are doing groundbreaking work in
these areas, such as developing sophisticated computer
models designed to optimize the location of biofuel production plants, designing better, more sustainable water treatment technologies, and exploring the science of
creating hydrocarbon fuel from biomass waste. Students
and faculty alike have extended their research beyond
the lab into real-world projects in developing countries,
where Illinois innovations are already making a real difference. The department’s new program in Energy-Water-Environment Sustainability, currently under development, will prepare a new generation of civil and environmental engineers who are armed with the knowledge
and tools to lead in these critical areas.
The result will be safer, more efficient, greener energy
and water solutions for today’s world and future generations.
istockphoto.com
Energy and water
are at the heart of
our economy and
way of life. While the
interrelationship of
water and energy is
critical, there are also
potentially devastating
environmental impacts
at all stages of energy
production and water
development. CEE
researchers are leading
the way in meeting
these challenges today
and preparing the
next generation of civil
and environmental
engineers to tackle
them tomorrow.
New program:
Energy-Water-Environment
Sustainability
A
new program, Energy-Water-Environment Sustainability (EWES), currently
under development in CEE, will focus on
sustainable solutions for the exploration,
production, delivery and use of energy,
and the intersection of these activities
with water and the environment.
The EWES program will enable students interested in a cross-disciplinary
civil and environmental engineering
education to earn a degree that focuses
on integrating scientific principles, engineered processes and systems analyses
to address diverse challenges related to
society’s growing energy needs and their
nexus with water and the environment.
New integrated course offerings and
undergraduate primary and secondary
options are planned. A flexible graduate
degree curriculum will be designed to accommodate students with backgrounds
in various sub-disciplines within civil and
environmental engineering, as well as
other engineering disciplines. The graduate program will also be designed so that
students meeting the degree requirements of the EWES program will have
also completed the requirements of the
College of Engineering’s graduate option
program certificate in Energy and Sustainability Engineering (EaSE).
The program is projected to launch in
2013.
i
Civil
Civiland
andEnvironmental
EnvironmentalEngineering
EngineeringAlumni
AlumniAssociation—Summer
Association—Summer2012
2012 99
Kumar heading Indian water
sustainability initiative
W
ater sustainability is one of the
greatest challenges facing the country of India. The urgent need for a clean,
reliable water supply is complicated by a
burgeoning population, agricultural demands, unreliable energy, and the monsoon system, which subjects the country to devastating floods during three
months of the year
and droughts during
others.
To address the
problem, the Indian
government
has
launched an initiative
called the Information
Technology Research
Academy for Innovations in Water Resources Sustainability
in India (ITRA-Water).
Its goals are to educate
the next generation of
Indian water sustainability professionals,
develop scientific and technological capacity, and lay the groundwork for sound
economic and policy decisions surrounding water use. Its leader is CEE Professor
Praveen Kumar, who brings expertise in
water resources and information technology, as well as a holistic view of water
problems—a critical perspective for India,
where “every challenge becomes a water
challenge,” Kumar says. Water scarcity
limits economic growth, the production
of food and the search for sustainable energy solutions, he says.
“Here is the water-energy-environment nexus in a very real, social context,”
Kumar said. “It’s really not possible to
10
solve one problem without addressing Agriculture is the largest user of water in India.
Information delivered directly to farmers, such
the others.”
Kumar led a Strategy Formulation as that pictured above, transmitted via cell
phone, has the potential to improve agricultural
Meeting in Delhi in September, at which practices. Information technology-based serparticipants from India and abroad—in- vices, one of the many strategies being explored
cluding representatives from academia, by ITRA-Water, have significant potential to afgovernment, industry and NGOs—gath- fect water sustainability, according to Professor
ered to identify four Grand Challenges, Praveen Kumar, pictured at left.
toward which research efforts by multi- a situation that could be prevented by
disciplinary teams will be focused. These information as to where groundwater is
are: improving hydro-meteorological located.
prediction for economic development,
ITRA-Water defines information techimproving groundwater
nology as “cyberinfrastruclevels and quality through
that includes commu“Here is the ture
enhanced water use efnication, computational,
water-energy- and collaborative technoloficiency in agriculture,
the achievement of 24/7 environment nexus gies; sensors and sensor
availability for total urban
systems; data management
water management, and in a very real, social and data mining technolointer-basin transfer for incontext. It’s really gies; and knowledge and
tegrated water resource
support systems.”
not possible to decision
management.
Still, technological adsolve one problem vances stemming from
Information technology will be key in alleviating without addressing ITRA-Water research projIndia’s water problems,
ects, as critical as they will
the others.” be, will not be the most
Kumar says, because many
of them stem from a lack
valuable result of the initiaof information. For examtive, Kumar said.
ple, farmers who need to pump water for
“The goal is to develop a new genirrigation have been granted free electric- eration of professionals who are trained
ity, but energy is not always available, so in inter-disciplinary thinking,” he said.
whenever it is, they pump water wheth- “The hope is that they will be in charge of
er they need it or not. This practice has making decisions and policies to actually
led to water waste and depletion of the address these problems in the system.
groundwater. Irrigation scheduling can So while we are tackling some challengbe done better with knowledge of state ing problems, and working on research,
of soil-moisture and reliable weather and setting up prototypes and addressforecast that can be delivered using mo- ing some of these things, we are hoping
bile phones to the farmer. Digging new that the key product of this effort is actuwells without knowing where the water is ally the trained professionals who will adlocated has put many farmers into debt, dress this problem.”
i
safeglobalwater.com
Mariñas to lead new
Safe Global Water Institute
W
ith the goal of seeking sustainable
solutions to the world’s safe water
and sanitation challenges, the College
of Engineering has established the Safe
Global Water Institute (SGWI) under the
direction of CEE Professor Benito Mariñas.
Approximately 10 percent of the
world’s population lacks access to improved water, and one-third of the world’s
population—2.5 billion people—lack adequate sanitation, according to UNICEF
and the World Health Organization. Many
hundreds of millions more must drink
unsafe water from improved sources, according to a report by the International
Finance Corporation. The work of SGWI
researchers will focus on Sub-Saharan Africa—one of the regions most severely affected by these problems—and Mexico.
“The new institute will integrate engineering with the natural and social sciences, building upon the 10-year success
of the University of Illinois’ WaterCAMPWS, the National Science Foundation
(NSF) Science and Technology Center of
Advanced Materials for the Purification
of Water with Systems,” said Ilesanmi Adesida, dean of the College of Engineering.
“Because of his extensive work with projects related to water treatment in various
parts of the world, Professor Mariñas is a
natural choice for leading this effort.”
The SGWI will develop partnerships
with more than 20 domestic and international academic institutions, U.S. federal agencies, international governmental
agencies, industrial partners, non-governmental organizations and targeted
communities.
The SWGI’s objectives include:
l Creating innovative sensors and information systems to
impact how communities make
decisions about safe water and
sanitation and to improve public
health and economic outcomes.
l
Developing transformative, culturally relevant technologies and socially embraceable
solutions to novel, affordable,
safe water systems to solve community-identified water crises.
l
Transforming sanitation
from a burden to a communityvalued resource regeneration
through innovative technologies and governance institutions, which
are able to recover energy and nutrients
from sanitation media while providing
protection of public health.
l
Developing new materials and
technologies to integrate renewable energy components within safe water and
sanitation systems.
l
Building capacity at local institutions that will sustain the safe water and
sanitation infrastructure.
Mariñas has made the Sub-Saharan region a focus of his work for the past three
years. As part of his environmental lab
course (CEE449), students work on design
projects related to water treatment, collaborating with college students in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya and Mexico. The
students travel to these countries to visit
their project sites and participate in joint
design sessions with students there. Since
1995, Mariñas has taught graduate and
undergraduate courses covering various
fundamental, laboratory experimenta-
Photos: Students and faculty from CEE at
Illinois, the University of Nairobi, and Bondo
University college analyze the water quality at a
drinking water pond where livestock also go to
drink (above). Students from CEE at Illinois and
the University of Nairobi interview local women
about water practices, uses and preferences
(below). Below left: Professor Benito Mariñas.
tion and design aspects of environmental
engineering and science with particular
emphasis in physico-chemical treatment
processes for water quality control.
The first major research grant awarded to SGWI, in partnership with the WaterCAMPWS and the University of Nairobi, is from the NSF/USAID Partnerships
for Enhanced Engagement in Research
program. The project is entitled, “Kenya
- Project 207 Addressing drinking water
quality challenges in developing countries: Case Study of Lake Victoria Basin.”
The institute will host an international
summit on Safe Global Water in Arusha,
Tanzania, during the second week of October 2012. The event will bring together
researchers, stakeholders, and decisionmakers to develop a strategic plan for
overcoming current and pending water
and sanitation challenges. The summit
will be funded by the NSF, King Abdullah
University of Science and Technology and
UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education. i
Converting biomass
into hydrocarbon fuel
Researchers explore and
perfect the science behind it
By Thomas Thoren
ucked away in the far southwest corner of campus, near where the South
Farms’ manure smells the strongest, is a
team of researchers that could one day
take said manure and transform it into
fuel to power your car toward fresher air.
A team of environmental engineers
and collaborators from the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center is making
progress in taking biomass waste — algae, manure or leftover grease from
kitchens, for example — and recovering
it into hydrocarbon fuels such as petroleum, diesel or gasoline. This is not a new
concept, however this team uses several
unique approaches that set their work
apart from any other when used together.
The general concept remains the
same: biomass wastes contain carbon, so
when they are combined with a hydrogen
source, such as waste glycerol or formic
acid, they can form hydrocarbon liquid
fuels. How this process is carried out is the
key difference between research teams.
Heading the group
is Associate Professor
Timothy Strathmann,
who with Professor
Gary Parker is developing the department’s
new Energy-Water-Environment Sustainability program. Strathmann and Ph.D. student Derek Vardon (BS
10, MS 12) are working
to better understand
the fundamental science behind these
conversion processes
rather than to simply
learn how to use them
for large-scale conversions.
They make the chemical reactions
more efficient in terms of time and energy
T
12
by using nanotechnology to design cata- Assistant Professor Timm Strathmann, left, and
lysts, Strathmann said. These can lower Ph.D. student Derek Vardon display algae, from
the temperature and pressure needed which lipids have been extracted, and the fuel
for the conversion from waste to fuel, and resulting from the conversion process.
therefore the amount of energy needed
to bring about the same reactions that fed into the reactor to make biofuel.
were previously energy-intensive.
The project began as part of his masThe team’s specific approach to this ter’s thesis and continues to be funded by
hydrothermal process is not common in his fellowships from the Environmental
this field of research
Protection Agency and National
because it uses water
Foundation. Since then,
The general Science
as a reaction medium.
he has partnered with Brajendra
concept Sharma, senior research scientist
Water’s
properties
change as its temper- remains the same: at the Illinois Sustainable Techature rises and falls,
nology Center, to continue buildbiomass wastes ing this project that began from
so it can be manipulated throughout the
contain carbon, scratch. Researchers from the
conversion process to
of Agricultural and
so when they Department
give the best results
Biological Engineering have also
are combined been involved in the work.
for each stage. When
heated high enough,
While it may seem odd to
with a hydrogen
water can dissolve
research ways to create hydrosource they can carbon fuels in the midst of adoils for the conversion process. As the form hydrocarbon vances in solar energy, electrical
mixture cools, the oils
and other alternative enliquid fuels. engines
condense and sepaergies that try to diminish our rerate from the water
liance on these fuels, Strathmann
once again, leaving an improved product said there will always be a need for liqthat is no longer waste.
uid hydrocarbon fuels. Heavy machinery
The group’s research is fairly young; and airplanes, for example, cannot run
Vardon began in 2010. He said his team on electrical engines, so the demand for
will likely continue their current work for these fuels will still exist for the foreseetwo to three years. After that, they will able future.
likely work for two more years as part of
Because of this need for liquid fuels,
his Ph.D. research to apply his knowledge Strathmann said there should be coordito more complex feedstocks, a term that nation between the manufacturing and
refers to chemicals or biomass that are Continued on page 14
Optimizing the location of biofuel production plants
By Leanne Lucas
here are many aspects to the complex issue of biofuel production. One
such aspect is the placement of biofuel
production plants and the overall logistics planning. Researchers
in CEE, as part of a larger project
funded by the National Science
Foundation, are tackling this topic, taking into account the impact
production plants have on engineering infrastructure, local communities and the environment.
CEE Associate Professor Yanfeng Ouyang is one of nine faculty
members on a multi-disciplinary
team working on the project, titled Interdependence, Resilience
and Sustainability of Infrastructure Systems for Biofuel Development. Their goal is to build a
large-scale mathematical model
that will integrate cutting-edge
research efforts on agricultural,
economic, transportation, water,
natural resources and social issues
to address the sustainability and
resiliency of biofuel development.
“The placement of bio-refineries faces challenges at all stages of
the production and logistics supply chain,” said Ouyang.
The location of biomass production is a major component of
the equation, he said. Most farms
produce bulky, low-density, high
volume biomass which is later converted
into liquid fuels. Shipment efficiency from
the farm to the plant, then the plant to
the pump dictates in large part where a
production plant should be, he said.
“Plants should probably be closer
to the side where shipping efficiency is
not as high, in order to keep those costs
T
as low as possible,” he said. “Usually, the
shipment from the farm to the plant is the
least efficient, so the plant should ideally
be close to the farms. However, farms can
be very scattered, and
“The placement
of bio-refineries
faces challenges
at all stages of the
production and
logistics supply
chain.”
the crop yield could significantly vary, making
the selection of optimal
locations challenging. “
A second consideration is proximity to
a transportation network. Land near interstate highways costs
more than rural land, but
transportation costs rise
when plants are located
in rural areas, Ouyang
says. Through collaboration with CEE Professor
Imad Al-Qadi, the team
is exploring the effects of
preserving and expanding relevant roadways or
railways.
The availability of water is another
consideration, said Ouyang. A group of
researchers including CEE Associate ProPhotos, left to right: Associate Professor Yanfeng
Ouyang, Professor Imad Al-Qadi, Associate
Professor Ximing Cai, Professor Murugesu
Sivapalan.
fessor Ximing Cai, CEE Professor Murugesu Sivapalan and Professor Emeritus
Gregory McIsaac of the Department of
Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences is estimating the water consumption in the cultivation of agricultural energy crops, and the impact that consumption has on the water quantity and quality
in that area’s watershed, Ouyang said.
“The fermenting and refinement process also requires a significant amount of
water. Fortunately, water is abundantly
available in Illinois, so that’s not usually a
problem here. But it could be an issue in
other states,” Ouyang said.
The impact a production facility will
have on the local communities must also
be addressed.
“Will the water consumption from
biomass production and processing have
a social, economic, environmental impact
on the rest of the community?” Ouyang
said. “Will large shipments going in and
out of an area change traffic conditions?
How will the local government and other
stakeholders view this added industry
and intervene? How would the diversion
of agricultural crops into energy feedstocks affect food market equilibrium and
local agricultural economy?”
Ouyang said the project, which started in 2008, is expected to conclude in
2013. To date, the team has published
about 30 journal papers on various aspects of the project.
“We hope to refine a model that
can be used to forecast how the biofuel industry will function most efficiently and effectively, and also assess
how much impact the industry will have
on other parts of society,” he said. i
© istockphoto.com/BanksPhotos
Converting biomass
waste recovery sides of production processes so waste can become a viable and
more efficient source of energy.
“We’ll really have to change how we
manufacture things and change the
waste we create, so hopefully we can
make waste that we can recover energy
from,” Vardon said. “There’s this idea of a
biorefinery, where you just grow biomass
and instead of using petroleum crude oil
to form our fuels and all of our chemicals
and products that we need, we just take
biomass, control the chemistry of how
you’re breaking it down and converting it
and have a bio-substitute.”
One biomass waste source that is already produced in vast quantities is vegetable oil from restaurant kitchens. This
resource is already being taken advantage of by Engineers Without Borders, a
registered student organization on campus, who converts the waste vegetable
oil from dining halls to biodiesel for the
University’s campus vehicles. This is not
as desirable as converting the waste to a
hydrocarbon such as diesel or gasoline,
Vardon said, because biodiesel requires a
modified engine whereas hydrocarbons
can simply replace the diesel purchased
at any gas station or be converted into
gasoline or other petroleum-derived
products.
Though many biofuels contain more
energy than ethanol, also a biofuel, they
still have less than a pure hydrocarbon
fuel such as gasoline because the biomass
that helps to create biofuels contains oxygen, nitrogen and other “poorly behaving
elements” that lower the energy content
levels, Strathmann said. Hydrocarbon fuels do not contain these elements.
An added benefit of hydrocarbon fuels is that they can be used in existing car
engines, which means drivers could use
them while continuing to use their current vehicles. This is beneficial because
car technology and transportation infrastructure are already prepared to make
14
“It always blows me
away to think: what
happens to all this
stuff? It just goes and
gets buried in a landfill
somewhere. ... We’ll
really have to change
how we manufacture
things and change the
waste we create, so
hopefully we can make
waste that we can
recover energy from.”
use of these recovered fuels as soon as
they become more readily available.
In addition to creating their own catalysts, Strathmann’s research group is also
trying to understand how catalysts are
deactivated, or poisoned, he said. Many
catalysts are only functional for a few
uses, but the group hopes to understand
their behavior well enough to create
catalysts whose activity can be sustained
over longer periods of time. The group is
also exploring ways to treat feedstocks
so they will not harm and deactivate the
catalysts.
The group is currently using model
compounds to better understand the
fundamental science behind the waste
conversion process and in turn design
more robust catalysts, Vardon said. After learning to process waste grease, the
project will then analyze even more complex wastes such as swine manure or algae, which can have thousands of different compounds.
But no matter where the team is along
their research’s progress, the goal will remain the same: to make use of what used
to be thought of as waste.
“It always blows me away to think:
what happens to all this stuff? It just goes
and gets buried in a landfill somewhere
and we treat it like, well, we got what we
wanted out it; we’ve got to dispose of it.
You can’t just keep on piling waste up,”
Vardon said. “I don’t think that we’re going to magically solve the waste problem,
but I think we can learn a lot.”
i
Water, land,
human labor and
non-renewable
resources such
as energy and
fertilizer are
used to produce,
process,
handle and
transport food
that no one
consumes.
“What if we
could reduce
those losses
by half?”
Cai asks.
“How would
that affect, for
example,
water
sustainability?”
Minimizing postharvest food loss
By Leanne Lucas
around $4 billion a year. ... This lost food
he postharvest loss of staple crops could meet the minimum annual food rearound the world has global implica- quirements of at least 48 million people.”
tions in areas such as food security, malThese losses also contribute to higher
nutrition, poverty, and food waste. Re- food costs and impact environmental
searchers within CEE are working with the degradation and climate change. Water,
ADM Institute for the Prevention of Post- land, human labor and non-renewable
harvest Loss to develop practical strate- resources such as energy and fertilizer
gies to combat those losses. The Archer are used to produce, process, handle and
Daniels Midland Company established transport food that no one consumes.
the Institute in January of 2011 with a $10
“What if we could reduce those losses
million grant to the University of Illinois at by half?” Cai said. “How would that affect,
Urbana-Champaign.
for example, water sustainability?”
Associate Professor Ximing Cai is leadIn many regions, agricultural water
ing the CEE team, which
use has been increasing
“It’s a very while the water available for
includes faculty from
construction materials,
different project use has been declining beconstruction
manageof the climate, Cai said.
for civil engineers, cause
ment, environmental en“Agricultural engineers
gineering and science,
but it is within have worked to develop efgeotechnical engineerthe realm of a fective irrigation systems to
ing, and structures. They
help farmers save water, but
new direction no matter what we do, we
will investigate optimal
engineering
solutions
that we are going, need a certain amount of
and infrastructure investto grow the crops,” he
which is systems water
ment required to minisaid. “In some places, after
mize postharvest loss.
and sustainable harvest, a third of the crop is
“We believe people
solutions. ... We lost. If we could reduce that
from different areas of
loss by half, then we could
civil engineering can hope to be leaders produce more and use less
work together to utilize
in a new area.” water, less land, less energy,
traditional civil engineeretc.”
ing tools to address the
The project will focus
problem of postharvest
on postharvest loss mitigafood loss,” said Cai. “This interdisciplinary tion in India. The team is divided into four
collaboration will provide benefits and in- sub-groups, each working on a different
sights that result in better solutions.”
component of the project. Professor WenAlthough losses vary greatly by crop, Tso Liu, of the environmental engineering
country and climatic region, Cai said es- and science group, and Assistant Profestimates of postharvest loss range any- sor John Popovics, of construction matewhere from 35 to 50 percent around the rials, will develop bio-sensors to monitor
world. According to a 2011 United Nations grain degradation in stockpiles.
Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)
“Wen-Tso will evaluate the mechastudy, “Roughly one-third of food pro- nisms of degradation from a biological
duced for human consumption is lost or point of view,” said Popovics. “CO2 is one
wasted globally, which amounts to about indicator [commonly the result of respira1.3 billion tons per year.” An example
Photos, top to bottom: Ximing Cai, Khaled Elgiven in an FAO/World Bank report stated Rayes, Youssef Hashash, Praveen Kumar, Wenthat “[t]he value of postharvest grain loss- Tso Liu, Paramita Mondal, Yanfeng Ouyeng,
es in sub-Saharan Africa [are estimated] at John Popovics.
©istockphoto.com/David Mathies
T
tion by insects and microbial life forms such
as mold and fungus],
but we both believe
that there are other
indicators that might
be better than carbon
dioxide — possibly
moisture, temperature, or some other
indicator. My job is to
develop a sensing system to monitor whatever indicates the
presence of that degradation. The system
has to be robust, costeffective and rugged,
to be used in situ.”
Popovics is also
working with Assistant Professor Paramita Mondal, of construction materials, to
look at materials that
can be used to build
or repair storage facilities.
“There seems to
be some emphasis
from the Indian government to build
more warehouses or
repair the old ones,”
said Mondal, “but
what seems to be
most interesting for
us at this point is to
work at the village or
on-farm storage level. Right now that is
very limited. Storage
facilities are made of
adobe or wood, and
sometimes they just
pile the grain on the
ground or dig a pit
and pour it in. It’s very
Continued on page 16
Innovating better wastewater
treatment systems
The system
represents a
new generation
of wastewater
treatment
technology.
It is very
environmentally
friendly and
demands much
less energy.
Membrane bioreactors (MBRs), used
increasingly to treat
wastewater in cities,
offer a variety of advantages over conventional wastewater
treatment technologies. They occupy
a smaller footprint,
generate less sludge
and produce a better-quality effluent,
which can be further processed for potable and non-potable water reuses. But
current MBR designs require a lot of energy to operate and maintain, and some
of them don’t remove micropollutants,
such as pharmaceuticals, a growing pub-
lic health concern. Professor Wen-Tso Liu
is designing a new MBR system that addresses these drawbacks and offers some
benefits as well.
Current MBRs use aerobic biological
processes with submerged membrane
separation units using microfiltration or
ultrafiltration membranes. A submerged
membrane unit consists of a membrane
module placed below the water level.
As the water passes through the membrane, solids and dissolved materials are
removed. This approach has a higher energy demand than traditional methods,
both for aeration and for the intensive
membrane cleaning that is necessary.
Liu’s three-year project aims to develop advanced ultra- and nano-filtration membranes and apply them to an
integrated anaerobic
MBR
system that can
degrade
and
convert organic
contaminants in
wastewaters to
methane as a biogas, achieve almost zero-liquid discharge — which means minimal water waste — minimize membrane
biofouling, remove micropollutants and
produce good-quality water that can be
used for direct non-potable or indirect
potable uses.
“The system represents a new generation of wastewater treatment technology,” Liu says. “It is very environmentally
friendly, as it produces little sludge that
must be incinerated or landfilled, dis-
Minimizing postharvest loss
“We need to understand two things,”
said Hashash. “First, what goes on in the
process of moving the product from the
farm to storage? What is the mechanical
aspect of this process? How do they carry
it, put it in a sack, put it in a truck, stack
it in a warehouse, bring it back out, and
distribute it? Can we improve the conveyance systems that are being used?
Second, how are the logistics of storage
managed? How is it organized?”
Like all the members of the team,
Hashash emphasized the importance of
visiting India to further understand the
needs. “Visiting the area is a very important component of this because farming practices are very different from, say,
farming practices in the United States.
The systems in place to collect, consolidate, and redistribute the harvest are really quite different. It’s significantly less
industrialized. Taking solutions that may
work here or in other countries is not the
approach that will work best.”
Finally, Professor Praveen Kumar, of
the environmental hydrology and hydraulic engineering group, is working
with Cai to develop a model which takes
the information that will be gathered by
all the different sources and provides scenarios that will enable the farmers and
decision-makers to take appropriate actions to mitigate postharvest loss.
“To what extent can we integrate
technologies across the entire postharvest supply chain to find the optimal way
to manage the loss?” Kumar asked.
Cai said he believes the project will
provide some unique opportunities for
undergraduate and graduate students.
“CEE has just launched a new program,
Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure
Systems. It hosts people from different
traditional CEE areas to work together for
more efficient infrastructure systems design. So this project provides an example
makeshift, it doesn’t last long, and it
doesn’t prevent any of the degradation
mechanisms John was talking about,” she
continued. “We are thinking about how to
use locally available material, so that the
people have ready access to it. And construction of storage facilities should not
be difficult, so farmers can hire villagers
or do it themselves.”
Materials being considered include
rice husks, a waste product from rice production that can be burned to an ash that
has cementing capacities, natural fibers
such as jute, or recycled fiber from the paper industry.
Professor Youssef Hashash, of the geotechnical engineering group, is working
with Associate Professor Khaled El-Rayes,
of construction management, on grain
transport and storage.
16 Visit
VisitCEE
CEEon
onthe
theweb
webat
athttp://cee.illinois.edu
http://cee.illinois.edu
16
for the new program to work on in the
future.
All the team members agree that
the issue of postharvest food loss is a
non-traditional area for civil engineers.
“I’m operating outside of my comfort zone,” said Popovics, “in as far as
working on agricultural issues. But
postharvest loss is a huge issue, and we
have to figure out where we can apply
our knowledge.”
Hashash said, “It’s a very different project for civil engineers, but it
is within the realm of a new direction
that we are going, which is systems
and sustainable solutions. When you
view the problem as a system, not as
individual components, our combined
expertise will allow us to address the
problem. It’s part of our struggle to
achieve a sustainable lifestyle, and we
have a skill set that we can apply. We
hope to be leaders in a new area.” i
Jinyong Liu
Above, the KAUST campus. At left, Professor
Charlie Werth, right, with CEE graduate students
Xin Xu, left, and Spurti Akki at KAUST.
Xin Xu
charges effluent water with a better quality than its influent, and demands
much less energy.
To operators, it is
also very easy and
robust to operate.”
The project is
sponsored by industry and in partnership with King
Abdullah University of Science
and Technology in
Saudi Arabia. Professor Mark Shannon of the Department
of Mechanical Science and Engineering is
collaborating. i
Partnership works toward sustainable
water development in Saudi Arabia
By Professor Charlie Werth
aculty in Civil and Environmental
Engineering (CEE) and the National
Science Foundation Center of Advanced
Materials for the Purification of Water
with Systems (Water CAMPWS) are nearing the end of a third year of collaborative engagement and research with faculty at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi
Arabia.
Saudi Arabia faces a number of
growing challenges related to sustainable water development. These include
economic desalination of seawater for
urban areas, development of advanced
technologies for water reuse, depletion
of non-renewable groundwater resources, and safe distribution of drinking water.
KAUST initiated a collaborative relationship with the University of Illinois to
realize the ambitious goal of developing
a world-class program in Environmental
F
Engineering and a Center for Water Desalination and Reuse. Since that time, Illinois
faculty in CEE and the Water CAMPWS
have helped KAUST realize this goal by
contributing to the recruitment of seven
new faculty members and by initiating six
new collaborative research projects with
newly hired faculty funded at more than
$2.5 million.
The research projects span a range of
topics in sustainable water development;
they focus on microbiology and water
quality of distribution systems, disinfection challenges of water after reverse
osmosis, new sensors for pollutant detection in water, anaerobic treatment of
wastewater using membrane bioreactors,
and novel catalysts for removing oxyanions in drinking water. A new call for
proposals was just issued, and Illinois faculty are again developing proposals with
KAUST faculty to initiate a new round of
collaborative research that will be funded
in excess of $2 million. i
Delegação
A CEE alumna is selected for a U.S. state department
delegation of women scientists to Brazil
By Amy Patrick
t was a total long shot, and I didn’t expect anything to come of it. A friend from college had forwarded
an email to me from the Department
of State, soliciting applicants for a delegation of women scientists to Brazil. The
friend, a graduate student in sustainable
design, was busy incubating her firstborn
and so international travel wasn’t a good
idea for her. She told me I should send in
my bio so that she could live vicariously
through me. I laughed and told her that
if I were selected, I’d bring back a golden
tamarin monkey for her baby. I submitted
my resume, and that was that. I received a call the following Monday from the Department of State telling
me that I’d made the short list, and after
a rapid series of interviews, I got the call
that I’d been selected out of the applicant
pool of more than 500 women. I would
travel to Brazil as a member of the U.S.
delegation of women scientists as part
of the Memorandum of Understanding
between our two countries aimed at advancing women, and we would study the
recruitment, retention, and advancement
of women in STEM (science, technology,
engineering and mathematics) fields. The credentials of my peers in the
delegation were formidable. Diane WrayCahen, Ph.D., clones pigs, works for the
USDA Foreign Agriculture Service, and
was an investigator following the bird flu
outbreaks. Erin Pettit, Ph.D., is a professor
of glaciology at the University of Alaska
I
Photos: At right, Amy Patrick. At left, the Estação
das Docas in Belém, Brazil. Backdrop: the Cristo
Redentor statue in Rio de Janeiro. All courtesy
of Patrick, except the golden tamarin monkey,
above right.
18
at Fairbanks. Candace Carroll, Ph.D., is a
postdoctoral fellow at St. Jude Children›s
Hospital, and Ofelia Olivero, Ph.D., is at
the National Cancer Institute—they’e
both curing cancer. Parinaz Massoumzadeh, Ph.D., (noticing a pattern?) is a medical physicist with the Mallinckrodt Institute. Donnette Sturdivant is an air quality
engineer with the Environmental Protection Agency. Lauren Armstrong’s Ph.D.
is in progress. She works as a researcher
with the United States Army, formulating
“energetics.” (She designs explosives. We
had an excellent discussion about explosive concrete.) The trip was an utterly transformational experience. We traveled to four cities during the 11-day trip: Recife, Belem,
Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia, the capital. We
met a multitude of scientists. We saw archaeological artifacts being restored and
toured nanotechnology facilities, seeing
some very incredible microscopes. We
met with members of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. We sailed on the Amazon and toured the botanical archives
of the Amazon rainforest. We toured
Brasilia with one of the senior structural
engineering professors at the university
there, hearing incredible stories about
the design of Oscar Niemeyer’s daring
reinforced concrete structures. In Brasilia,
we also had the opportunity to hear Dilma Rousseff, the (first female) president of
the country, speak at the opening of the
Third National Conference on Policy for
Women. Finally, we got to sit down with
Ambassador Thomas Shannon in his private office at the U.S. Embassy for about
an hour to discuss our findings and make
recommendations for the future of our
countries’ partnership. Such a packed and diverse schedule
afforded us the opportunity to absorb
so much of Brazil, its culture, how it functions as a country, what their citizens’ values are, and the role of science and engineering in everyday Brazilian life.
From an engineering viewpoint, Brazil is growing at a tremendous rate, due
not only to its increased economic standing in the world, but also due to the upcoming World Cup and Olympic Games
to be held there. A massive quantity of
infrastructure is being placed under an
accelerated schedule, while construction
and engineering practices in many parts
of the country aren’t up to the challenge.
While Brazil typically hasn’t reached out
to countries with more established engineering communities like the United
States, that may be changing, and we may
have opportunities to lend them engineering talent and even to form mentoring relationships between professionals
in our respective countries.
My other set of observations is borne
of my experience as a woman working in
the engineering industry. In the United
States, there’s an undercurrent to the
thought that more women should be in
STEM fields. There’s always the unspoken tendency to assume that someday,
women will try and struggle and work
©E
r
e
ic G
va
er t
/ is
kp
to c
ho
t o.
co
m
and eventually be capable of reaching the
same heights that men have reached in
these fields. In Brazil, there’s an undercurrent of thought, too, but it’s much more
overt. It’s “What on earth have we done
to alienate half of our potential workforce? What are we doing wrong?” It was
refreshing to see this perspective. When
you’re in an environment that constantly
tells you that you must do twice as much
in order to be considered half as effective,
it’s easy to accept sole responsibility for
your success or failure based upon your
ability to work your fingers to the bone.
While Brazil may look to us as a technology leader, I think perhaps we would benefit to learn from them, as well. i
In the United States,
there’s an undercurrent
to the thought that more
women should be in STEM
fields. There’s always the
unspoken tendency to
assume that someday,
women will try and struggle
and work and eventually
be capable of reaching the
same heights that men
have reached in these
fields. In Brazil, there’s an
undercurrent of thought,
too, but it’s much more
overt. It’s “What on earth
have we done to alienate
half of our potential
workforce? What are we
doing wrong?”
Amy Patrick, P.E., (MS 06) is the principal and CEO of Thalia Engineering Studio in Houston, Texas.
She may be contacted at [email protected]. No golden
tamarin monkeys
were disturbed in
the making of
this article.
www.nurailcenter.org
DOT funds
first-ever rail
transportation
center in CEE
T
he U.S. Department of Transportation
(DOT) has awarded a grant of $3.5 million to a national, multi-university consortium led by the Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
to establish a rail transportation and engineering research center. The National
University Rail (NURail) Center will focus
on rail research and education to improve
railroad safety, efficiency and reliability. Particular focus will be on challenges
associated with rail corridors in which
higher-speed passenger trains share infrastructure with freight trains.
The NURail Center will be the first DOT
University Transportation Center (UTC)
focused solely on rail, and the proposal
received broad support from a large number of public, private sector, and international rail organizations. The University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign leads a consortium of research universities including
the University of Illinois at Chicago, the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Michigan Technological University, RoseHulman Institute of Technology, the University of Kentucky, and the University of
Tennessee. Within the theme of shared
rail corridors, research projects will focus
on track and structures; train control; rolling stock; human factors, and other topics
identified based on Federal Railroad Administration and Association of American
Railroads priorities. The center will be under the direction of Professor Christopher
P.L. Barkan, the Krambles Faculty Fellow
and director of the Illinois Rail Transportation and Engineering Center (RailTEC).
The University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign has been a leader in rail edu20
Chancellor Phyllis Wise speaks at the NURail kickoff meeting in the Newmark Civil Engineering
Laboratory on May 17. The meeting brought together representatives from the U.S. Department of
Transportation and the various universities that make up the center’s consortium.
cation and research for more than a century. The railroad engineering program at
Illinois has the most extensive curriculum
in railroad engineering of any university
in North America, complemented by an
extensive research program in rail engineering and transportation through
RailTEC.
These research grants are part of $77
million in DOT grants to 22 UTCs—involving a total of 121 different universities
across the country—to advance research
and education programs that address
critical transportation challenges facing
the nation. The UTCs conduct research
that directly supports the priorities of
the DOT on transportation-related issues
such as shared rail corridors, innovations
in multimodal freight and infrastructure,
bridge inspection methods, and reducing
roadway fatalities and injuries.
i
Save the date
Railroad Environmental
Conference
October 16-17, 2012. Registration
will open in August.
http://ict.uiuc.edu/railroad/RREC/
overview.php
CEE alum offers campus clock tour
A
mong the most interesting historical
artifacts on the University of Illinois
campus are its clocks. An 1820 English
grandfather clock that stands in the university president’s outer office features a
hand-painted moon dial with a thoughtful expression. The Library Archives room
is home to an 1850s timepiece that once
served as the alarm clock of Gregor Mendel, the founder of genetics. The University’s very first public clock, built in 1878
and once boasting a 9-foot, 200-pound
pendulum, now resides in a Mechanical
Engineering Laboratory reading room.
Each clock has a story and its own
place in the history of the University of
Illinois. Eight of the most significant are
featured on the Campus Clock Tour, offered several times per year at no charge
by CEE alumnus and retired Geography
professor Bruce Hannon (BS 56). Hannon
restored some of them personally and
keeps a watchful eye on all of them, making sure they are properly cared for.
Hannon earned three degrees from
the University of Illinois—his bachelor’s
degree in civil engineering (1956) and a
master’s degree (1965) and Ph.D. (1970)
in the Department of Theoretical and
Applied Mechanics. After 12 years conducting energy research in the Center for
Advanced Computation, he joined the
faculty of the Department of Geography
and taught dynamic modeling of biological and economic systems for more than
30 years.
He became interested in clock restoration 40 years ago, when he couldn’t find
anyone to repair an antique clock he had
bought for his wife. Tackling the problem
himself ignited a new passion.
“I eventually managed to get it running, and that did it!” he said. “There is
a constant contrast with my theoretical
work and the reality of mechanical clock
repair.”
Word got around, and Hannon began receiving requests to restore antique
clocks on campus. He began offering the
clock tour last year. About 50 people have
taken it so far, he said. During the course
of the 90-minute walking tour, Hannon
talks about the history of mechanical
timekeeping, the individual clocks on the
tour and the history of the buildings that
house them.
Hannon’s personal favorite is one that
hangs in the Engineering Dean’s office,
an 1898 self-winding wall clock that controlled all the bells and clocks on campus
from 1898 until the 1960s by means of an
electric signal sent over connecting wires.
A daily signal from the Western Union
Company kept the clock accurate. Hannon restored this clock in April 2011, and
he would welcome the opportunity do
the same with additional clocks from the
University’s past.
“If anyone knows of a clock once used
here that could be donated back to the
University, I would fix it, find a prominent
place for it and include it on my clock
tours,” Hannon said.
i
To receive information about upcoming
tours, email Bruce Hannon at [email protected].
Photos, top to bottom: Detail of the moon
dial on the grandfather clock in the University
president’s office. Bruce Hannon with the 1898
self-winding wall clock in Engineering Hall, his
personal favorite. The grandfather clock in the
Altgeld Library.
Bridge team heads to nationals bigger, stronger
By Joseph Riddle, Captain
he Steel Bridge Team, this year
dubbed the “Iron Illini,” once again has
completed a successful year designing,
fabricating and constructing a 1:10
scale steel bridge. As usual, the new
specifications were released in August
2011, at which point the design team got
right to work. Similar to last year, the
bridge needed to consist of a 17-foot-long
main span with a 6-foot-long cantilever
on one end. We did a little research to
determine what types of designs worked
well last year and began discussing
conceptual design ideas.
After the somewhat disheartening
end to last year — we failed the lateral
test at the regional competition — we
had every intention of designing a stiffer
(especially laterally) bridge this year. Due
to dimensional requirements in the rules,
T
22
no piece of the bridge could exceed 3
feet by 4 inches by 6 inches, and the
deepest vertical truss that could fit within
dimensions was 1-foot-3-inches deep.
Based on these dimensional restrictions
and our observations from last year, we
decided to use a 6-inch-deep girder
acting as the top chord of a 1-foot-3inch truss. As soon as we detailed all
the connections and got all of our new
members shop-trained, we were ready to
begin fabrication.
Fabrication was very hectic, but as
always it was also enjoyable to get in
the shop again and get our hands dirty.
We also had the largest team in recent
history with a total of 16 members who
stayed committed throughout the year.
The previous few years we have averaged
closer to eight members. This large
involvement is very exciting as it is a sign
that our steel bridge program is growing
in strength, in numbers, and — as we
saw at the regional competition — in
notoriety.
We finished bridge fabrication a little
later than we had hoped, which left us
with minimal time to practice timed
construction. However, after only about
15 practice runs, we improved our time
from our first run of 38 minutes to 12.5
minutes. To absolutely ensure that we
would not repeat our failure of the lateral
test from last year, we retested the bridge
after construction practice. Sure enough,
the bridge passed by a very large margin.
We took 14 members to the regional
competition and were joined by two
previous captains from the 2008-09
and 2009-10 seasons and by our faculty
adviser, Professor James Lafave (BS 86,
MS 87). We had a bit of a scare during
timed construction with a few pieces
not fitting correctly, but our abbreviated
yet thorough preparation helped us
overcome and still finish with a decent
construction time. We placed third in each
of the six categories: Economy, Efficiency,
Lightness, Stiffness, Construction Speed,
and Aesthetics and third overall, which
qualified us for the national competition
at Clemson University over Memorial Day
weekend.
We accomplished our goal of
qualifying for Nationals this year, making
this the fourth time that Illinois has
qualified in the last six years. We look
forward to continuing this growing
tradition of excellence as a new season
begins in August. i
The team came in 44th out of 47 teams at the
national competition and won a Quiz Bowl, for
which the prize was a new welder.
Photos: (Left) Scott Earnest and Joe Riddle load
the bridge. (Right) Near the beginning of timed
construction, Tom Dehlin hands a girder to Joe
Riddle as Scott Earnest is waiting for the next
piece and Alex Lakocy and James Triezenberg
work on constructing the cantilever.
Canoe team’s light, aesthetic Maverick 3rd at regionals
By Raphael Stern and Arielle Malinowski, Captains
T
his year, the Concrete Canoe Team
honored its tradition of striving for
excellence by constructing a “Top Gun”
movie-themed canoe, “Maverick.” This
year’s canoe featured a pristine white concrete finish, which was wet sanded to produce a smooth surface for staining. The
acid stain used on the canoe depicted the
blue outline of an aircraft carrier, with orange lettering giving the name of the university. The interior showed off the school
colors with a large orange and blue “I”
overlay in the middle. Additionally, a blue
overlay stripe ran around the inside of the
canoe, meeting up with the “jet blast” of
two jets stained onto the bow and stern.
This gave the canoe a streamlined image,
representing the speed the canoe can attain. The art work was designed by sophomore Hong Kim and featured a tribute
to Professor Emeritus Clyde Kesler, the
inventor of the concrete canoe, who died
in December.
Due to modifications in this year’s
mix design, the lightweight concrete was
strong enough that the canoe needed
only a one-half-inch hull thickness to
support the stresses induced during paddling. This light hull allowed for a canoe
that weighed only 130 pounds, significantly lighter than anything the University of Illinois has put forth in recent years,
and significantly lighter than any other
canoe at the regional competition.
The team began practicing paddling
in the fall and continued once the weather permitted in the spring. This rigorous
training schedule produced an excellent
paddling team. Together with a stream-
lined, light canoe,
these paddlers were
able to show off the
university’s talent in
the races at the regional competition
and secured the team
a second-place finish
in paddling.
Overall, the team
put in close to 3,000
labor hours in designing, constructing and
racing this canoe. The
team competed in
the regional competition hosted April 19-21 by Bradley University, in Peoria, Ill. There the team competed in racing, final product judging, a
design paper, and a design presentation.
The team achieved second place in every
category except for final product judging—stronger individual standings than
any in recent times. This score qualified
the University of Illinois Concrete Canoe
Team for an overall third place finish.
We are very thankful to all of our
sponsors, our graduate advisers Armen
Amirkhanian; Jason Mote, P.E.; and Roman Vovchack (BS 11), as well our faculty
adviser, Jeffery Roesler (BS 92, MS 94, PhD
98). Without their help and motivation,
we would not have made it as far as we
did.
Anyone interested in joining the team
for future seasons, or financially supporting the team may contact next year’s
captains, Hong Kim, hongkim3@illinois.
edu, and Min Yin, [email protected]. i
This year’s Concrete Canoe team entry was
“Maverick.” Thanks to an innovative concrete
mix, the canoe was remarkably light at just 130
pounds. Sophomore Hong Kim created the
art work, which featured a tribute to the late
Professor Emeritus Clyde Kesler (middle photo,
the name “Kesler” is painted on the wing of
the plane). Kesler is known as the Father of the
Concrete Canoe, having conceived of the idea
in 1970 when he gave his class the assignment
of building a concrete canoe. In 1971, the first
concrete canoe race was held at Kickapoo State
Park against Purdue University, after which the
Illinois team was, briefly, the world concrete
canoe racing champions. Kelser’s obituary appears on page 39.
glcm.cee.illinois.edu
By Daniel Malsom
hen he was a child, Chas Crump
(BS 10) often spent his time playing
with toy dump trucks. This January, he
and 10 other construction management
students had the opportunity to view the
real, 300-ton payload variety in action at
the Mt. Owen coal mine near Sydney, Australia.
The mine was one of more than nine
construction sites and corporate offices
the group visited while touring the cities of Sydney and Brisbane as part of the
Global Leaders in Construction Management (GLCM) annual winter trip. An international trip is part of the two-year program, which prepares students to work in
the increasingly global construction management industry.
“There is a lot of investment [in Australia] right now, including several of
the largest construction projects in the
world,” said Brent Young (MS 06), program director. “They are surviving what
they call the GFC—Global Financial Crisis—better than many other places, mainly due to abundant natural resources.”
The GLCM team visited a wide variety
of projects, touring each site with knowledgeable project managers.
“Everyone who was there seemed like
they were on top of their game … like
Pedro Alvarez
W
24
they had at least 15 years of experience in
the field,” Crump said.
One of Crump’s favorite site visits
came on the first day of the trip, when the
group toured 1 Central Park, a 623-unit
apartment complex managed by Watpac
Construction. Crump was impressed with
the “heliostat,” a massive cantilever with
aluminum panels designed to reflect
sunlight off one apartment complex and
down to a space otherwise hidden in the
shadows of surrounding buildings.
According to Young, trips like the one
to Australia really help students understand the nature of construction work in
a way that is not possible through classroom instruction.
Travel expenses for GLCM international trips vary based on the choice of
destination, how remote each project
site is, and the number days spent at each
location. The GLCM program defrays
some of the cost, and corporate sponsors
Turner Construction and the Walsh Group
support the GLCM interns they hire each
summer by sponsoring them on the international trips. Turner Construction
sponsored Crump for the Australia trip,
and CEE student Matt Sullivan is the next
Turner Scholar. He will work for Turner as
an intern this coming summer and will
benefit from sponsorship on the January
2013 trip.
Students in the GLCM program enter
as seniors and graduate with M.S. degrees
two years later. In addition to participating in an international trip, they complete
multi-disciplinary coursework and an independent project based on their career
interests, go on domestic site visits, work
at a summer internship after their senior
year, and in general are given many opportunities to interact with industry.
Graduates of the program are in high
demand, Young said, with many GLCM
GLCM students view an elaborate architectural
model of the 1 Central Park project.
Pedro Alvarez
Global Leaders in Construction
Management visit Australia
Ron Halicke, CEE senior, views the construction
of 1 Central Park, $600 million dual residential
towers being constructed by Watpac in the Chippendale neighborhood of Syndey.
students receiving multiple employment
offers even during the toughest times of
the recent construction recession.
Past international destinations have
included China, where students toured
the Olympic Village construction site;
Panama, where they viewed the canal
expansion; Dubai, where they saw the
Burj Khalifa during its construction; and
Canada, where they learned about oil
sands mining. Young is confident that
the hands-on, global experiences his students receive from the trips prepare them
to become some of the brightest construction management leaders down the
line. He is always looking for additional
corporate sponsors to ensure the longevity of the program.
“After six years and 30-plus alumni,
GLCM has proven its value both to our
students and to our industry partners,
who host, sponsor and hire our graduates,” Young said. “Our task now is to
ensure that GLCM is sustainable for the
long-term and many more students have
this opportunity in the future. I’m confident that as the program ages, GLCM
alumni will rise in industry, strengthening
the GLCM brand even more.”
Crump graduates from the program
this May and plans to return to work with
Turner this summer. After three trips with
GLCM, he no longer feels intimidated by
the 300-ton payload trucks and nine-figure contracts that characterize the construction management industry.
“This program has prepared me to go
out into the work force,” Crump said. i
For more information about the GLCM program,
visit glcm.cee.illinois.edu.
Sustainable Urban Systems
class works for a greener C-U
By Thomas Thoren
s sustainability continues to gain
more of the national spotlight, civil
engineering students are shifting their
focus to local and regional opportunities
thanks to a new department course.
Sustainable Urban Systems, one of
the special topics offered as CEE 598, debuted in the fall 2011 semester with Professor Barbara Minsker and her teaching
assistant, CEE graduate student Tristan
Wietsma. The course’s 19 students, split
between five project groups, worked on
various projects designed to improve sustainability in the Champaign-Urbana area.
Through site visits and communications
with local residents and city officials, the
students gained an understanding of two
issues plaguing the community: storm
water runoff and poverty. The groups
were free to choose any project topic as
long as they stayed true to the essence of
sustainability.
“Their requirement was that they
had to address the three dimensions of
sustainability—social, economic and
environmental—and it had to be about
Champaign-Urbana,” Minsker said.
The groups chose topics that suited
the unique skills and strengths of their
members. They worked toward solutions
with nothing more than the skill sets they
brought to the first day of class, along
with assistance from Wietsma, Minsker,
and a large team of consultants from the
community and university.
“What I was trying to do was teach
them systems thinking and how to integrate their previous knowledge with what
sustainability is about,” Minsker said.
Sammy Rivera, a CEE graduate student
studying sustainability, said he thought
this teaching style was beneficial for his
growth as an engineer.
“I think what Barbara wanted us to see
was the actual world of sustainability and
not having someone there backing you
up every time you have a doubt,” he said.
“I know that most of my group feels more
A
confident attacking sustainability issues.”
“What I wanted them
to understand is how you
go from a very mushy,
open-ended problem
and define it down to something you
can carry out as an engineering analysis,”
Minsker said. “When they leave, that’s
what they will have to do all the time. It’s
a big shock when you get out there and
discover the real world is very messy, and
all those nice equations aren’t doing you
any good whatsoever.”
All in all, Minsker said she enjoyed
watching them use their creativity while
working on projects.
“It was one of the most rewarding
teaching experiences I’ve ever had in
15 years,” Minsker said. “It was really fun
working with the students on their projects and just fascinating learning about
the sustainability issues in ChampaignUrbana, especially some of the poverty
issues. People don’t think about that a lot
when they work on sustainability.”
For a handful of students, the openended nature of the course was difficult,
Wietsma said.
“When you provide a blank slate for
everybody, some students are okay with
that and some get a little lost,” he said.
Minsker is planning a more structured
approach for the fall 2012 class, which
would also make the course more similar to a typical relationship between engineering consultants and clients, who
usually have a problem in mind, Minsker
said. This could be recreated in the course
by having community members and city
officials identify problems and present requests for proposals to the students.
The course was designed to evolve
with each teaching, Wietsma said. This
involves use of the Medici data and information management system developed
by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
Students in CEE 598 Sustainable Urban Systems visit the John Street stormwater project in
Champaign.
“The idea is that every semester we
can create a body of work on specific topics and upload that to this management
system, and then future courses will be
able to draw on that,” he said.
This work would include collected
data, topic-related papers, and previous
course projects, for example, and would
give future students reference points to
jumpstart their own projects.
At the end of the course, the students
made a final presentation attended by
about a dozen local leaders. Their final reports will be sent to the city governments
of Champaign and Urbana.
Maria Jones, a CEE graduate student
studying environmental engineering,
continues to work toward making her
group’s project a reality. Her group consisted entirely of students from developing countries, so social justice was the primary reason for her group’s topic selection. They examined a vacant lot at Fifth
Street and Hill Street — a low-income
area of Champaign — for a possible sustainable development with features such
as urban farming. Jones said engineering
projects typically focus on how to meet a
system’s demand by only examining the
technological solutions and ignoring the
most important part of all: the people
who will be affected by these projects.
Though she says her project is currently “standing on shaky ground” as she
navigates the politics of working with municipalities, she is dedicated to the task.
“I’m willing to take it on as long as I’m
in this community,” Jones said.
i
department news
N 1
o.
Professor Christopher P.L. Barkan received
the National Association of Railroad Professors
Academic Award in recognition of his excellent
record of promoting knowledge about the progress of transportation by passenger train in the
United States and Canada. This is the second time
that NARP has presented this award. The NARP
Academic Award was established in 2011. Barkan
was cited, “For major contributions addressing
the challenge of providing the U.S. railroad industry with the skilled personnel required for the
nation’s expanded passenger and freight rail services, for his
work as an educator and researcher at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign, and for his writings and leadership
efforts supporting the national need for expanded rail programs at North American Colleges and Universities. America’s
travelers are grateful.”
CEE graduate students Victoria Boyd and Xin Wang won the
Clean Energy Education Fellowship. The award is given to students who are passionate about promoting and researching
clean energy literacy.
Professor William Buttlar has been selected to serve on a
working group that will assess opportunities for a Universitywide online education initiative. The group will consist of faculty and chancellors from each of the three Illinois campuses.
Buttlar currently serves as CEE’s Director of Online Programs.
Professor Ximing Cai was awarded the 2012 Best ResearchOriented Paper Award from the EWRI-ASCE Journal of Water
Resources Planning and Management. Cai’s paper was titled,
“Value of Probabilistic Weather Forecasts: Assessment by
Real-Time Optimization of Irrigation Scheduling.”
U
.S. News & World Report
named the civil engineering
graduate program at Illinois number one in their Best Graduate
Schools rankings in the category,
Best Engineering Schools: Civil.
The University of Illinois ranked
third in the category, Best Engineering Schools: Environmental/
Environmental Health. Undergraduate program rankings are
announced in the fall.
CEE graduate student Evan J. Coopersmith (MS 08) has been
selected for the 2011 CEE Alumni Graduate Assistantship for
Teaching Excellence.
Mark Denavit (MS 09), a CEE Ph.D. student, won the prestigious Vinnakota Award from the Structural Stability Research
Council at the 2012 Annual Stability Conference held in Dallas, Texas, in April. The award is given for the best paper at
the conference, as presented by and based on the work of a
graduate student. Denavit’s paper was “Stability Analysis and
Design of Steel-Concrete Composite Columns,” by M.D. Denavit, J.F. Hajjar and R.T. Leon.
Ph.D. student Evgueni Filipov has been selected by the College of Engineering as a participant in the MF3 Program. The
highly competitive MF3 program was developed to provide
experience in the focus areas of research, teaching and mentoring for doctoral students interested in teaching engineering as a profession.
New advisory board established
A
n Academic Advisory Board has been
established in the department to advise on all aspects of operations, including curricula, education, research, governance, finances, climate, outreach and
global engagement.
The inaugural board will include:
•
•
•
Glen Daigger, Senior Vice President
and Chief Technology Officer, CH2M Hill
David Daniel, President, University
of Texas at Dallas
Nicholas Jones, Dean of Engineer-
26
ing, Johns Hopkins University
Andrew Whittle, Head, Civil and
Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Linda Abriola, Dean of Engineering, Tufts University
Robert Street, Professor Emeritus, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University
The six- member team will meet on
campus for one day each year. Terms
of service will be for four years, renewable once.
•
•
•
CEE Ph.D. student Arun Gain (MS 10) has won an FMC fellowship. An advisee of Professor Glaucio Paulino, Gain is
working on an interdisciplinary project on structural topology
optimization.
Professor Marcelo García has received the 2012 ChandlerMisener Award from the International Association for Great
Lakes Research. It is presented annually to the author of the
peer-reviewed paper in the current volume of the Journal of
Great Lakes Research judged to be “most notable.” García
was honored for his paper titled, “Bed morphology, flow
structure and sediment transport at the outlet of Lake Huron
and in the upper St. Clair River,” which was published in 2011.
García also spoke in April at the Panama Canal Congress. His
talk was titled, “Building the Canal that Saved Chicago and its
impact on the Panama Canal Construction.” At the congress,
García was presented with an award for significant contributions in science and technology from the National Secretary of
Science, Technology and Innovation. In May, García delivered
the Enrico Marchi Lecture at the University of Florence.
CEE graduate student Allison Goodwell was one of four students to receive the Roy J. Carver Fellowship in Engineering.
She is currently working with Professor Praveen Kumar on a
project that studies the effects of flooding and other natural
or human-induced stressors on natural landscapes.
Professor Emeritus Neil Hawkins (MS 59, PhD 61) was named
an honorary member of the American Concrete Institute.
Earlier in the year Hawkins was also named a distinguished
member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and
a fellow of ASCE’s Structural Engineering Institute.
Ph.D. student Nolan Kurtz (MS 10) has been selected as the
Sandia National Laboratories Excellence in Science and Engineering Research Program Fellow for the 2012-2013 academic
year. Kurtz will receive a stipend of $45,000 for one year,
renewable for up to three years. He is invited to spend time
at Sandia National Laboratories and participate in internships and other activities for research advancement. He will
be working on a research project led by Associate Professor
Junho Song to advance computer modeling technology that
predicts the response of lifeline infrastructure networks to
extreme events and enables effective risk-informed decisionmaking.
Professor David Lange received a 2012 Certificate of Commendation from the American Society of Civil Engineers
(ASCE) for his work as a faculty adviser for the ASCE Student
Chapter at the University of Illinois. Lange also received the
2012 Engineering Council Excellence in Advising Award in the
College of Engineering.
Graduate student Nanxi Lv (MS 09) has received the Yee Fellowship for 2012. Lv was also selected by the College of Engineering as a participant in the MF3 Program.
Ph.D. student Kaitlin Mallouk (MS 09) has been selected by
the College of Engineering as a second-year participant in the
Kumar invested as Lovell Professor
Herricks honored
for bird radar work
Professor Ed Herricks, right, is pictured with
Steve Osmek, a wildlife biologist at SeattleTacoma Airport.
P
P
rofessor Praveen Kumar was invested as the Colonel Harry F. and
Frankie M. Lovell Professor on February 3.
Speakers included Interim Vice
Chancellor for Research Robert A. Easter, Executive Associate Dean Michael
B. Bragg, and Professor and Head Amr
S. Elnashai. Special guests included
Kumar’s wife, Charu, and daughter,
Ilina.
“I am filled with deep gratitude for
this honor,” Kumar said. “The University of Illinois has provided an environment that nurtures scholarship, and
I am immensely fortunate that I am a
part of this tradition of excellence.”
Kumar joined the faculty in 1995.
He has taught undergraduate and
graduate courses in hydrosystems
engineering, engineering modeling
under uncertainty, surface water hydrology, hydroclimatology, stochastic
hydrology, non-linear methods in hydrology and hydroinformatics.
Kumar is an expert in the use of
computer models and informatics to
increase our understanding of hydrologic processes over a range of space
and time scales, with particular em-
Professor Praveen Kumar, left, poses on the
day of his investiture with his daughter,
Ilina, and his wife, Charu.
phasis on understanding and modeling the complex non-linear interactions among processes. His research
is developing a predictive understanding of the hydrologic cycle that
integrates across ecosystems, climate
and human impacts, and involves the
study of hydroclimatology, ecohydrology, geomorphology and hydroinformatics.
The late Colonel Harry F. Lovell
(BS 32) was born on May 20, 1910, in
Fulton County, Illinois. His 31-year
military career included serving in
WWII and in the Army Corps of Engineers. He retired in 1961.
Through a series of significant
gifts to the Colonel Harry F. Lovell
and Frankie M. Lovell Endowment
Fund, Colonel Lovell generously supported the University of Illinois Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering. He died on Aug. 9, 2005,
in Sun City, Ariz. i
Full story at cee.illinois.edu/kumar_lovell_
professorship.
rofessor Emeritus Edwin E. Herricks received an award for Distinguished Service to the Port of Seattle
from the organization’s Aviation Division. The award cited Herricks’ work,
through his Airport Safety Management Program, to establish an avian
radar program at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
“Your support through the Center
of Excellence for Airport Technology
at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign has been unprecedented,” wrote Michael Ehl, Director of
Aviation Operations in a letter of commendation to Herricks.
Over the past 10 years, Herricks
and his team deployed three avian radars to support the airport’s Wildlife
Hazard Mitigation Program, advanced
its Geographic Information System
capabilities by digitizing 23 years of
wildlife data, and providing in-kind
support including cameras and visual
analytics to support surface and gate
management technologies.
Most recently, Herricks’ work saved
the airport more than $4 million,
when the bird-use data his technology helped collect proved the effectiveness of a less expensive method
for making the airport’s stormwater
ponds less attractive to birds.
Herricks accepted the award in October at a luncheon held in his honor
at the airport.
i
department news
MF3 Program. The MF3 program provides experience in the focus areas of research, teaching and
mentoring to Ph.D. students interested in teaching engineering.
Professor Arif Masud has been elected a Member-at-Large of the Executive Council for the U.S.
Association for Computational Mechanics.
Graduate student Mark Messner (BS 10, MS 11)
will receive a 2012 National Defense Science and Engineering
Graduate Fellowship to pursue Ph.D. studies in CEE. The fellowship is sponsored and funded by the Department of Defense and administered by the American Society for Engineering Education. Messner’s advisers are CEE Professor Robert
H. Dodds Jr. (MS 75, PhD 78) and Mechanical Science and
Engineering Professor Armand Beaudoin.
Professor Barbara Minsker received the 2012 Earth and Water Resources Institute’s Service to the Profession Award. The
EWRI Planning and Management Council selected Minsker
because of her work with the WATERS Network and campus
sustainability initiative at Illinois and her participation in
global and multidisciplinary activities within CEE.
CEE student William G. Nichols and teammates took first
place at WATERCON, a conference of the Illinois Section of the
American Water Works Association (AWWA) and the Illinois
Water Environment Association held on March 21 in Springfield, Ill. Nichols presented the results of a mock design project the team completed through CEE 437 Water Quality Engineering, taught by Professor Wen-Tso Liu. The project was
designed with the help of Andy Martin, P.E., (BS 98) and Anant
Sriram, P.E., both of Greeley and Hansen, and Greg Swanson,
Moline Utilities General Manager. The goal was to expand the
capacity of the water treatment plant in Moline, Ill., while
meeting the new cryptosporidium regulations set by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency. Nichols will now go on to
represent the team at the AWWA National Conference in Dallas, Texas, in June.
Assistant Professor Helen Nguyen was named a recipient of
the University of Illinois College of Engineering 2012 Dean’s
Award for Excellence in Research.
Professor Gary Parker was selected to receive the 2012 British Society for Geomorphology (BSG) Wiley Blackwell Award
for the best paper published in the BSG’s journal, Earth Surface
Processes and Landforms. “A New Framework for Modeling the
Migration of Meandering Rivers” was written by Parker, Y. Shimizu, G.V. Wilkerson, E.C. Eke (MS 08), J.D. Abad (MS 02, PhD
08), J.W. Lauer, C. Paola, W.E. Dietrich and V.R. Voller. Parker
also received the Tau Beta Pi Daniel C. Drucker Eminent Faculty
Award from the University of Illinois College of Engineering.
The following professors were ranked as excellent by their
students for fall 2011: Robert H. Dodds Jr., Larry Fahnestock, Marcelo García, James LaFave, Liang Liu, Benito
Mariñas, Scott Olson (BS 94, MS 95, PhD 01), John Popovics, Junho Song, Bill Spencer, Albert Valocchi, Charles
Werth, Daniel Work, Brent Young, and Julie Zilles.
Academic Adviser Rebecca Stillwell received the 2012 Engineering Council Excellence in Advising Award.
Tristan Rickett recently joined Hanson and is working in the
company’s Seattle-area office. Rickett, a railroad designer,
currently assists with track assessment reports and design
summary drawings.
Nguyen
Stillwell
CEE students Amna Mahmud and Ana Lucuta were honored as Knights of St. Patrick for 2012.
The following CEE students are Bronze Tablet honorees,
meaning they rank in the top three percent of the students
in their graduating class: Steven Gresk, Vincent Kania, You
Li, and Andrew Rehn.
The following CEE students were honored at the College of
Engineering’s annual awards ceremony:
Laurie DeHaan, Andrea J. Culumber Award
Ashley Williams, William L. and Elizabeth A. Ackerman
Scholarship
Gregory Williams, Edward E. and Elizabeth Joanne DeZwarte Engineering Scholarship
Jill McClary, Fred Eggers Engineering Scholarship
Joshua Moore, Calvin Barnes Niccolls Memorial Scholarship
Gregory Johnson, John W. Page Scholarship
Carrie Desmond, Caterpillar Foundation Engineering Merit
Scholarship
Andrzej Tatkowski, Caterpillar Foundation Engineering
Merit Scholarship
Jeffrey Geldmyer, Illinois Engineering Achievement Scholarship
Matthew Jarrett, Richard L. and Virginia Johnson Scholarship
Bethany Myelle, Kirkwood Scholarship for Women in Engineering
Jonathan Dandurand, Vincent E. O’Brien Iroquois County
Scholarship
Elizabeth Tewolde, Shell Incentive Fund Scholarship
Anna Waldron, George L. Bridwell Memorial Scholarship
Algorithm leads to patents for CEE faculty
C
EE faculty members were awarded situations in which engineers and others
patents recently for two innovations: need to know the properties of a material, but some materials are
a faster way to model the
difficult, if not impossible, to
behavior of materials and
analyze, Ghaboussi said. In
an improved method for
many of those cases, though,
eye doctors to measure init is possible to measure the retraocular pressure.
sponse of the system, he said.
Both patents are based
Ghaboussi
collaborated
on an autoprogressive alwith Professor Emeritus David
gorithm developed by CEE
Professor Emeritus Jamshid
Pecknold (MS 66, PhD 68) and
Ghaboussi
Ghaboussi to determine
CEE Professor Youssef Hashash
the properties of materials by measuring to develop the new material modeling
the response of the structural system of system, U.S. Patent No. 7,447,614, “Methwhich they are a part. There are many ods and systems for modeling mate-
28
rial behavior.” CEE alumnus Tae-Hyun
Kwon (MS 02, PhD 06) worked with the
three to apply the algorithm to the
problem of measuring eye pressure,
U.S. Patent No. 8,070,679 B2, “Method
for accurate determination of intraocular pressure and characterization of
mechanical properties of cornea.”
The patents demonstrate just two
of the algorithm method’s applications in engineering and medicine —
the tip of the iceberg in terms of its
versatility, Ghaboussi said.
i
Full story at cee.illinois.edu/algorithm_patents.
New faculty
Paolo Gardoni
A
ssociate Professor Paolo Gardoni
joined the faculty in December. He
will teach undergraduate and graduate courses in structural engineering,
including structural analysis, and interdisciplinary courses including engineering risk analysis, reliability analysis
and engineering ethics.
“The new frontiers of engineering
are interdisciplinary,” Gardoni said.
“My teaching and research are focused
on developing a new kind of engineer
and researcher that has interdisciplinary knowledge and, as a result, the
unique skills required to solve the most
pressing global challenges of the 21st
century.”
cee.illinois.edu/faculty/paologardoni
Gardoni’s areas of expertise include
sustainable development and planning;
reliability, risk and life cycle analysis; decision making under uncertainty; performance assessment of deteriorating systems; ethical, social, and legal dimensions
of risk; policies for natural hazard mitigation and disaster recovery; and engineering ethics.
Before joining Illinois, Gardoni was an
associate professor at Texas A&M University. The degrees he holds are a Laurea
(equivalent to a B.S. and M.S.) in structural engineering from the Politecnico
di Milano, Italy (1997); a Master of Engineering in structural engineering from
the University of Tokyo (1997); a Master
of Arts in statistics from the University of
California at Berkeley (2001); and a Ph.D.
in civil engineering from the University of
California at Berkeley (2002). i
More than 60 companies attend 2012 spring job fair
H
osted twice a year in the Newmark Lab crane bay, the CEE job
fair brings company recruiters to
campus and offers students the opportunity to find internships and fulltime positions. Fairs are held the last
Thursday in September and the last
Friday in February. Registration opens
in June for the fall fair and in November for the spring fair. Approximately
65 companies and nearly 600 CEE students attend the events.
The department thanks the following companies for sponsoring lunch:
Silver Sponsors
Civiltech Engineering, Inc.
Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc.
Bronze Sponsors
Bowman, Barrett, and Associates Inc.
Carollo Engineers
Ciroba Group
Sargent & Lundy
For more information about hosting a booth at the CEE job fair, please
contact Breanne Ertmer, (217) 2655426, [email protected].
i
Watch the job fair video
Point your smart phone at this QR code to watch a three-minute video
about the job fair or visit the department’s YouTube channel at youtube.
com/ceeatillinois. Photo: Andre Hunter, CEE junior.
cee.illinois.edu/alumni/jobfair
department news
Students
plan, execute
EKS retreat
By Thomas Frankie
ach year, during the coldest month of
the Illinois winter, several dozen student researchers leave campus to attend
a two-day conference at Allerton Park
and Retreat Center in nearby Monticello,
Ill. There they present their research, attend a poster session, and socialize with
colleagues and professors. The major difference between this gathering and any
other professional conference is that this
one is planned, organized and attended
almost entirely by Illinois CEE students.
The 8th annual EKS Retreat, named
for the three professors who sponsor
the event for their students — Amr Elnashai, Dan Kuchma and Bill Spencer
— was held this year February 4-5. Approximately 40 students participated.
Student researchers look forward
to this yearly opportunity to spend a
weekend together away from campus
in a setting that has the feel of a small-
E
scale conference experience. Each year,
participants spend a day and a half attending student presentations, a poster
session, and a keynote lecture. These
professional experiences are complemented by social events; attendees
spend the night at the conference center and share meals together. The annual event is planned and coordinated
by a student committee consisting of one
student representative from each group
and is funded by the three advisers.
The keynote speaker for this year’s
retreat was Professor Jennifer T. Bernhard of U of I’s Electrical and Computer Engineering department.
She
spoke on the features and benefits
of pursuing a career in academia.
Saturday evening featured an array
of social activities and games, includ-
EKS participants inside the Allerton Mansion Library. Photo by Nicholas Wierschem.
ing friendly ping-pong and poker competitions, as well as get-to-know-you
games, karaoke, and even a magic show.
The event always fosters a great sense
of unity within the groups. The impact
of these experiences and perspectives
gained, as well as the strong relationships built between students, will be
felt far beyond their years at Illinois.i
Full story at cee.illinois.edu/EKS.
Thomas Frankie (BS 08, MS 10) is a CEE Ph.D.
candidate studying the effects of combined
actions on reinforced concrete structures
in the Illinois NEES MUST-SIM facility and
instructing the Spring 2012 offering of the
department’s Experimental Methods course
(CEE 498).
CEE faculty win grant to redesign core courses
P
rofessors Praveen Kumar and David
Lange will lead an initiative to redesign the department’s two foundational
undergraduate courses, CEE201 Systems
Engineering and Economics and CEE202
Engineering Risk and Uncertainty, thanks
to a grant from the College of Engineering
through its Strategic Instructional Initiatives Program (SIIP).
The goal of the college-wide program
is to improve the efficiency of delivering
30 Visit CEE on the web at http://cee.illinois.edu
important gateway classes and to better
relate learning to engineering practice.
The CEE proposal was one of five proposals chosen for the first phase of SIIP. The
department will receive $100,000 for the
project, renewable for up to three years.
Kumar and Lange will lead the redesign, but all eight faculty members
who teach the courses will be involved
in its redesign. The classes were chosen
because they are considered critical to
student success. Most students take
them as sophomores when they are
deciding their primary and secondary areas of study, decisions that affect their career paths. The goals of
the redesign include developing new
content that reflects the emerging
needs of the CEE profession, improving students’ ability to communicate
technical matters, and developing new
instructional methods.
i
Old Masters
Engineering giants of the department’s history
Chester P. Siess
1916-2004
Educator, researcher, engineer
By Professors emeritus William J. Hall, John D.
Haltiwanger and Narbey Khachaturian
Chester P. Siess was born on July 23,
1916, in Alexandria, La. He earned his
B.S. in civil engineering from Louisiana
State University in 1936 and his M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering with
a structures concentration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
in 1939 and 1948, respectively. He entered the engineering profession during
the Depression as a survey party chief
in the Rural Road Inventory Program of
the Louisiana Highway Commission, and
while there also organized a soil testing laboratory within the commission. In
1937 he began his graduate studies at the
University of Illinois working as a Special
Research Assistant in the Department of
Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. In
June 1939 he joined Ralph B. Peck in the
Chicago Subway Soils Laboratory. When
that work was completed in April 1941,
Siess assumed a short-term position in
the New York Central Railroad Bridge Office in Chicago.
Siess returned to the University of Illinois in September 1941 as a Special
Research Associate in the Department
of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics,
and in 1945 he was promoted to Special
Research Assistant Professor. In 1949 he
transferred to the Department of Civil
Engineering as a Research Assistant Professor, where he participated in the programs of the Structural Engineering Laboratory, specializing in concrete research.
He proceeded through the ranks, becoming Professor of Civil Engineering in 1955
and serving as head of the department
from 1973 to 1978, at which time he retired and was appointed Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering.
Siess’ contributions to the profession
came about through tireless efforts in his
research studies and his instruction of
more than 1,100 students (including 35
doctoral students), many of whom contributed greatly to the advancement of
our knowledge in concrete. His intensive
educational and research activity centered on the development of modern
codes and standards; his published work
was directed to practical applications for
improving our understanding of the behavior of reinforced and prestressed concrete elements in bridges and buildings.
All of these activities contributed to improvement of the bases upon which our
structures are more safely and economically designed and constructed.
Further exemplifying his contributions to the profession was his extensive
participation in technical societies, particularly the American Concrete Institute
(ACI) for which he served as president
(1974-75). He was a member of ACI for
more than 50 years and was a long-time
member and chairman of Committee
318, which is responsible for the “Building
Code Requirements for Structural Concrete.” During his tenure as a professor at
Illinois, he conducted research that provided the basis for much of the thinking
behind the building codes for reinforced
and prestressed concrete. During this
era of great design and construction difficulties in concrete structures, Siess’ work
His intensive
educational and
research activity
centered on the
development of
modern codes
and standards. ...
[improving] the
bases upon which
our structures
are more safely
and economically
designed and
constructed.
made the industry
ultimately
realize the sensitivity of shear
to moment in
reinforced concrete elements; this was a
landmark contribution to structural engineering.
Among his numerous awards and
honors are the following: American Concrete Institute Wason medal (1949, jointly
with N.M. Newmark), Turner Medal (1964),
the R.C. Reese Award (1956 and again in
1970, the latter jointly with J.O. Jirsa and
M.A. Sozen), and Honorary Membership
(1969); Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute Award (1956); American Society of
Civil Engineers Research Prize (1956), Ernest E. Howard Award (1968), and Honorary Membership (1978). He was elected
to the National Academy of Engineering
(1967), was a Charter Member of Louisiana State University Engineering Hall of
Distinction (1979), and received the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Distinguished Service Award (1987).
In 1994 Siess was chosen to be the
51st National Honor Member of Chi Epsilon, the Civil Engineering Honor Society.
The Chester and Helen Siess Endowed
Professorship in Civil and Environmental
Engineering was established in 2001.
Siess died on January 14, 2004. i
2012 CEE Student Awards
A. Epstein Award in Civil Engineering
Vince Kania
Peter Stynoski
Jiansong Zhang
Alvord, Burdick & Howson Award
Anna Waldron
Chicago Outer Belt Contractors Association
Scholarship
Anna Delheimer
Anna Lee and James T.P. Yao Scholarship
Aditya Nagpal
ASCE Outstanding Instructor Award
Liang Liu
ASCE Outstanding Student Award
Jacob Thede
Bates and Rogers Scholarship
Brittany Cook
Elliott Smith
Nora Sadik
Bob Zieba Memorial Scholarship
Samantha Bryant
Bowman, Barrett & Associates Outstanding
Scholar Award
David Kan
C.S. and Ruth Monnier Scholarship
Jenna Diestelmeier
Cesar Rojas
Carroll C. Wiley Traveling Award
Ryan Smith
Thompson-McClelland
Caterpillar Scholars Scholarship
Daniel Mosiman
Reshmina Williams
32
Civil Engineering Class of 1943 Undergraduate
Leadership Award
Bethany Myelle
Crawford, Murphy, & Tilly Inc. Scholarship
Si Si
Laura Walsh
CRSI Education and Research Foundation
Scholarship
Michael Kuo
Delores Wade Huber Scholarship
Ryan Chan
DFI Educational Trust Berkel & Company
Contractors Inc. Scholarship
Justine Brennan
Alex Lakocy
Megan Wallace
Doris I. and James L. Willmer Endowed
Scholarship in Civil and Environmental
Engineering
Jessica Reifschneider
Earle J. Wheeler Scholarship
Luke Livers
Paul Papazisi
CEE Outstanding Advising Award
Helen Nguyen
Eli W. Cohen – Thornton Tomasetti Foundation
Scholarship
Hong Kim
CH2M Hill Transportation Endowed Scholarship
Amanda Budnik
Ernest L. Doctor Memorial Award (IAPA)
Ugwem Eneyo
Chester P. Siess Award
George L. Farnsworth, Jr. Scholarship
Hanting Wang
Photos, top to bottom: Dan Malsom, left, received
the Illinois Association of County Engineers Award,
presented by Professor William Buttlar. Bethany
Myelle received the Civil Engineering Class of 1943
Undergraduate Leadership Award, presented by
Sidney Epstein (BS 43). Christopher Naranjo, right,
received the Industry Advancement Foundation
of Central Illinois Builders of the AGC Scholarship,
presented by John B. Meek (BS 73), president of
Felmley-Dickerson Co. Jose Martinez received the
Max Whitman APWA Memorial Scholarship, presented by Nancy Whitman Ford.
Geotechnical Scholarship Gift
Adam Blumstein
Golf Course Builders Association of America
Foundation Scholarship (GCBAA)
Kyle Koenig
Grant W. Shaw Memorial Scholarship
Alek Heilstedt
Christine Rhoades
Harold R. Sandberg Scholarship
Veronika Tomanova
Harry R. Hanley Memorial Scholarship (IAPA)
Gilberto Chaidez
Harvey Hagge Concrete Scholarship
Illinois Ready Mix Concrete Association
Alex Brand
Henry T. Heald Award
Denglin Wu
Illinois Association of County Engineers
Award
Matthew Jarrett
Andrew Kimmle
Daniel Malsom
Raphael Stern
Industry Advancement Foundation
of Central Ilinois Builders of the AGC
Scholarship
Christopher Naranjo
Ira O. Baker Prize - First Prize
Andrzej Tatkowski
Ira O. Baker Prize - Second Prize
Andrew Rehn
Ira O. Baker Memorial Scholarships
Michael Dodge
Daniel Levitus
Jack and Kay Briscoe Scholarship
Richard Gutierrez
Joseph Staats
Klein and Hoffman Inc. Scholarship
Daniel McCarthy
Koch Scholarship in Civil and Environmental
Engineering
Ugwem Eneyo
Leigh F. J. Zerbee Scholarship Civil
Engineering
Eric Lebow
Erich Maxheimer
Maude E. Eide Memorial Scholarship
Laurie Dehaan
Yesenia Gramajo
Max Whitman APWA Memorial Scholarship
Jose Martinez
Melih T. Dural Undergraduate Research Prize
Stephanie Tong
Norman Carlson Scholarship
Scott Schmidt
RJN Foundation Civil Engineering
Scholarship
Carlton Hlasten
Road Builders Charities Scholarship
Maria Warnock
The Lawrence J. and Margaret J. Fritz
Undergraduate Scholarship
John Berg
Walker Parking Consultants Scholarship
Mona Patel
Thierno Kane
Walter L. and Carole A. Crowley Scholarship
Andrew Rehn
Wayne C. Teng Scholarship
Rajarshi Bhakta
Yuri Kim
Marika Nell
Winson Teng
Wilfred F. and Ruth Davison Langelier
Scholarship in Sanitary/Environmental
Engineering
Daniel Mosiman
Alexandra Knicker
William A. Oliver Endowed Scholarship
Anthony Ali
William C. Ackermann Sr. Civil Engineering
Scholarship
Andrew Bishop
William E. O’Neil Award
Ryan Altemare
Photos, top to bottom: Assistant Professor
Thanh H. (Helen) Nguyen, posing with her son,
Karl Vu, received the CEE Outstanding Advising Award, presented by Associate Professor
Liang Liu, who won the American Society of
Civil Engineers Outstanding Instructor Award.
Joseph Staats, left, and Richard Gutierrez, right,
received Jack and Kay Briscoe scholarships, presented by Richard Briscoe. Andrew Rehn, center,
received the Walter L. and Carole Crowley
Scholarship, presented by the donors. Rehn also
received the Ira O. Baker Second Prize. Si Si, left,
and Laura Walsh received Crawford, Murphy &
Tilly Inc. scholarships, presented by company
representative Timothy P. Tappendorf (BS 80).
Civil and Environmental Engineering Alumni Association—Summer 2012
33
alumni news
2010s
© Shapiro Photography
Daniel D. Katz (BS 12) was hired by Manhard Consulting as a staff engineer in their Vernon Hills, Ill.,
office.
Michael King (BS 12) was hired by Manhard Consulting as a
staff engineer in their Lombard, Ill., office.
Michael Musgrove (BS 10, MS 11), a civil engineering intern,
recently joined Hanson and is working in the company’s St.
Louis office. He currently is assisting with engineering during construction on a large earth dam project. Musgrove had
worked with Hanson as a geotechnical engineering intern
prior to accepting the full-time position.
2000s
Michael Grussing (MS 02), Lance Marrano (BS 97) current CEE
graduate student Louis Bartels and Joe Karbaz, all employees
of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Construction Engineering
Research Laboratory (CERL) won the James D. Prendergast
Technology Transfer Award from CERL. They were recognized
for adoption of the BUILDER management system, a technology transfer that allows facility owners to manage their assets
strategically and cost-effectively.
Michael Mendenhall, P.E., S.E., (BS 02), a structural engineer
at Hanson Professional Services Inc. in Springfield, Ill., was
named Young Engineer of the Year by the Capital Chapter of
the Illinois Society of Professional Engineers.
Robert G. Pekelnicky (BS 00, MS 01) was named a Rising Star
in Civil and Structural Engineering by business management
consulting firm ZweigWhite. The award recognizes engineers
aged 40 or younger who have excelled in their profession.
Pekelnicky is an Associate Principal at Degenkolb Engineers
in San Francisco. For the past 10 years, Pekelnicky has been
active in the development and improvement of codes and
standards. He promotes and advances disaster resilience,
multi-hazard mitigation, and code and standard development, as well as the idea that engineers can holistically address hazards.
Dziugas Reneckis (BS 02, MS 03, PhD 09) received an Outstanding Dissertation Award for his Ph.D. thesis, “Seismic
Performance of Anchored Brick Veneer.” The Masonry Society
recognized Reneckis at their annual meeting in November
2011. Currently, Reneckis works as a project engineer out of
Thornton Tomasetti’s London office.
Ryan J. Solum (BS 03) was promoted to Project Manager at
Manhard Consulting in Vernon Hills, Ill.
34
Scott Nacheman (MS 97) is a structures specialist with Illinois Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 1
and has served as a firefighter.
1990s
Mat Fletcher (BS 94) was named a Rising Star in Civil and
Structural Engineering by
business management consulting firm ZweigWhite. The
award recognizes engineers
aged 40 or younger who have
excelled in their profession.
Fletcher works with Hanson
in the company’s Peoria, Ill.,
office as a senior bridge engineer and railway project manager. He serves as a member
of the American Railway EngiFletcher
neering and Maintenance-ofWay Association’s Committee 15 on Steel Structures and is a
member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Thomas A. Moore (BS 95, MS 97) recently had an article
published in the spring issue of Wood Design Focus, a journal published by the Forest Products Society. The article was
titled, “Using Structural Insulated Panels in Non-Residential
Structures—a Case Study.”
Nominations invited:
CEE alumni awards
If you know of a deserving colleague
who graduated from CEE at Illinois, consider
nominating him or her for a CEE Alumni Association award. The Distinguished Alumnus/Alumna Award and the Young Alumnus/Alumna Achievement Award recognize
those who have distinguished themselves
in the field at different career stages. The
next deadline is Aug. 1, 2012. For more information, please visit our alumni awards
page of the CEE website at cee.illinois.edu/
CEEAAawards.
Scott G. Nacheman (MS 97) was named a Rising Star in Civil
and Structural Engineering by business management consulting firm ZweigWhite. The award recognizes engineers
aged 40 or younger who have excelled in their profession.
Nacheman is a Vice President at Thornton Tomasetti Inc. in
Chicago. He specializes in building investigations, failure
analysis and property loss consulting, as well as restoration/
repair design, and has served as a firefighter. He serves as a
structures specialist with Illinois Urban Search and Rescue
Task Force 1, as well as DHS/FEMA US&R IN-TF1 and the FEMA
Us&R IST incident management team.
John Peisker (BS 84, MS 94) was elected to serve as President of the Associated General Contractors of Illinois (AGCI)
at this year’s AGCI convention in
Normal, Ill. He has now served
in every AGCI officer position.
Peisker’s goals for the year include funding for highways and
airports, and advocacy at the
state and federal level. He has
worked with MACC of Illinois, the
parent company of O’Neil Bros.,
for more than 15 years. Now
serving as the vice president of
O’Neil Bros., Peisker manages
Peisker
the safety, estimating, equipment, and construction aspects
of operation.
1980s
William F. Baker (BS 80) was named a member of the National Academy of Construction this March. He is known for his
work on tall buildings and long-span roof structures. Baker
was the chief structural engineer for the Burj Khalifa in Dubai,
the world’s tallest manmade structure. Baker began working
with Skidmore Owings & Merrill in 1981 and was elected Partner in 1996. He was also the featured speaker in December at
the College of Engineering Commencement.
Koch visits as first engineer in residence
C
Pekelnicky
Thomas DeJarld (BS 82) celebrated 25 years of service with
Hanson Professional Services
Inc., where he works as a senior
structural engineer in Hanson’s
Peoria, Ill., office. Since joining Hanson in 1987, DeJarld has
worked on bridges, commercial and industrial structures
and renovations, and water
DeJarld
and wastewater facilities. He
is a member of the American
Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute of Steel
Construction, Building Officials Code Administrators, and is
an elected member of the City of Peoria’s Construction Commission.
Nancy Love (BS 85, MS 86) is now a Board Certified Environmental Engineer of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers. She serves as a professor at the University of
Michigan – Ann Arbor.
EE’s first Engineer in
Residence, Paul Koch
(BS 66, MS 68), visited the
department on April 20.
The new program is an effort to bring accomplished
alumni back to campus to
interact with students and
faculty.
Koch’s main presentation was entitled, “Now
I’m an Engineer. Do I Want to be a Consultant?” About 85 students attended
the talk, which also included a pizza
lunch. Koch spent the rest of the day in
the department, meeting one-on-one
with students and faculty.
Koch has been the owner, Corporate Officer, and/or Chief Engineer of
three consulting engineering companies and currently serves as a private
consultant, supporting the efforts of
several firms across the country to
provide engineering, construction
and/or IT services. Since 1971 he has
been a pioneer in the development
and application of GIS technology
for environmental engineering and water
resource projects. He
has experience in all
aspects of environmental engineering, including planning, design,
construction, facilities
operation and financial/management support. He has provided
professional engineering services in
all media–water supply, stormwater,
wastewater, solid/hazardous wastes
and air quality.
This year, Koch received the College of Engineering’s Alumni Award
for Distinguished Service and the University of Illinois Alumni Association
Distinguished Service Award.
If you have questions about the
CEE Engineer in Residence Program
or would like to submit nominations
for upcoming alumni visitors, please
contact Breanne Ertmer by email at
[email protected], or by phone at
217-265-5426. i
CEE at Illinois
Corporate Partners Program
cee.illinois.edu/cpp
The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering gratefully acknowledges the
following companies who contribute to CEE at Illinois as Corporate Partners.
alumni news
Dan Pape (BS 87) recently celebrated 25 years of
service to Crawford, Murphy & Tilly. He specializes
in the design, construction and site development
of airfields. Over the course of his career, Pape
has provided services on numerous airfield construction projects, including the DuPage Airport
in West Chicago, Ill., St.
Louis – Lambert Airport,
and O’Hare International
Airport. He currently is
working on rehabilitation
projects that will prepare
Chicago Rockford International Airport for the new
Boeing 747-8 series planes
and other wide body cargo
aircraft. Pape resides in St.
Charles, Ill.
Pape
Michelle Halle Stern (BS 88) began working for HDR Architecture as their director of sustainable design services. She
is a nationally recognized leader in LEED building design and
previously was an associate at Perkins + Will.
1970s
Rodger B. Jackson (BS 67, PhD 79) was awarded the first
Distinguished Alumni Award of the Morrill Engineering Program (MEP) for his years of service to MEP and to the College
of Engineering.
James K. Wright (PhD 73) was elected as president of the
American Concrete Institute (ACI) for 2012-2013 at this year’s
ACI convention in Dallas, Texas. He currently works as a professor of civil engineering at the University of Michigan – Ann
Arbor, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate classes
in structural engineering. Wright’s research focuses on the
design of earthquake-resistant concrete structures and postearthquake damage studies.
1960s
Paul Koch (BS 66, MS 68) received the College of Engineering’s
Alumni Award for Distinguished Service and the University of
Illinois Alumni Association Distinguished Service Award.
Richard Lanyon (BS 60, MS 61) has published Building the
Canal to Save Chicago, a book that details the city’s endeavor
to construct a massive public works system to save Chicago
from a public health disaster. The book recounts the history
that led to the building of the canal and addresses in words
and pictures the technical aspects of the engineering and
construction that made the project a reality. Lanyon worked
with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater
Chicago for 48 years.
Ward R. Malisch (BS 61, MS 63, PhD 66) received a Lifetime
Achievement Award from the American Society of Concrete
Contractors (ASCC) on September 17, 2011. He serves as the
technical director for ASCC and was the editor of Concrete
Construction magazine for 14 years. He was also a senior
managing director for the American Concrete Institute.
Alumnus, Jess C. Brown (BS 98, MS 99, PhD 02),
right, pictured with Professor Emeritus Vern
Snoeyink, gave the keynote speech at the Environmental Engineering and Science Symposium
April 6. Brown is a Vice President and Research
and Development Practice Director for Carollo
Engineers in their Sarasota, Fla., office. He spoke
on “Overcoming Conventional Wisdom in the
Drinking Water Industry.” Snoeyink was Brown’s
adviser.
36
1950s
Bernie Schwartz (BS 56) and his wife, Charlotte Adelman,
have published their book, The Midwestern Native Garden
– Native Alternatives to Nonnative Flowers and Plants; An Illustrated Guide. The book offers suggestions for gardening
with wildflowers while avoiding the use of invasive plants and
includes color photographs.
Marcus Dersch (BS 09, MS 10), left, and J. Riley
Edwards (MS 06) pause for a picture in the Yeh
Center before embarking on the AREMA C-30
and International Concrete Crosstie and Fastening System Symposium Technical Tour June 6.
The technical tour, hosted by Union Pacific, was
the first main event of the symposium, which
drew more than 100 attendees. Two buses
took participants to a number of sites, including the department’s Advanced Transportation Research and Engineering Laboratory in
Rantoul, Ill.
Cookie giveaway
brightens EWeek
The department celebrated
national
Engineers Week 2012
with a cookie
giveaway, made
possible by alumni gifts, in the Yeh
Center lobby on February 21. Point
your smart phone at the code to
watch a one-minute video of it,
or visit the department’s YouTube
page: youtube.com/ceeatillinois.
“Bond, Amr Bond”
Professor and Head Amr Elnashai tries
out the Jaguar. Below, the interior of the
Q Boat.
Several items from the James Bond collection of Electrical and Computer Engineering
alumnus Mike VanBlaricum, above, Chief Scientist and President Emeritus of Toyon Research
Corporation, were on display for the 2012 Engineering Open House. The Jaguar XKR and
Bombardier Rev 800 MXZ Ski-Doo from “Die Another Day” and the Q boat from “The World is
Not Enough” were showcased in the Newmark crane bay. VanBlaricum is president of the Ian
Fleming Foundation, dedicated to the study and preservation of Fleming’s literary works. In
addition, the foundation acquires and preserves subsequent products of the original works,
including films, merchandise and memorabilia. Mike’s daughter, Ann (BS 03, MS 05) is a CEE
alumna and an engineer with Wiss, Janney, Elstner in Boston. Mike VanBlaricum is a history
buff in addition to Bond memorabilia afficionado; he is working on a College of Engineering
history and a distributed museum of engineering innovations here on campus.
CEE bids farewell to Bob Dodds at retirement reception
CEE faculty and staff gathered in the
Yeh Center May 10 for a retirement reception honoring Professor Robert H. Dodds
Jr. (MS 75, PhD 78), who served as department head from 2004-2009.
Dodds and his wife, Deana BlandDodds, have moved to Maryville, Tenn.
Dodds will consult with Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Dalton Nuclear
Institute at the University of Manchester
in the United Kingdom on material/structural issues in commercial nuclear power
plants and hold a position as a part-time
research professor at the University of
Tennessee, Knoxville.
“I’m very fortunate to leave CEE at a
time of great strength in the department
— in our outstanding leadership, faculty
and staff, finances and facilities,” Dodds
said. “In academics, just as in athletics,
it’s always best to leave at a high point.” i
Bob Dodds and his wife, Deana Bland-Dodds, at his retirement reception in May.
to select new officers for the CEE
Alumni Association
Board of Directors
According to the bylaws of the CEE Alumni
Association,the board is required to publish
the slate of nominations for constituent
approval. All CEE alumni are asked to cast
their votes and return this ballot by mail or
email to the addresses below.
Open positions for Board of Directors for the
new term:
President 2012-2014:
Tracy K. Lundin (BS 80, MS 82), Fermilab,
Batavia, Illinois
Write-in:
Past President 2012-2014:
Lawrence P. Jaworski (BS 72, MS 73),
Brown and Caldwell, Beltsville, Maryland
Vice President 2012-2014:
Allen J. Staron (BS 74), Clark Dietz Inc.,
Chicago, Illinois
Write-in:
2nd Vice President 2012-2014:
Colleen E. Quinn, Ricondo & Associates
Inc., Chicago, Illinois
Write-in:
Directors 2012-2014 (vote for two):
James M. Daum (BS 77), Bowman, Barrett
and Associates Inc., Chicago, Illinois
Dana B. Mehlman (BS 99, MS 01),
Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP, Chicago,
Illinois
Write-in:
Please mail to:
Breanne Ertmer
External Relations Coordinator
205 N. Mathews Ave.
Urbana, IL 61801
Or email your choices to:
[email protected].
in memoriam
Ballot
2000s
John J. Hausman (BS 99, MS 01)
died Jan. 24. He was 34. Hausman
published a paper in 2000 that won
the Transportation Research Board’s
Fred Burggraf Award, given for his
excellent research and publication
of a “paper of outstanding merit.”
He also worked as a civil engineer for Applied Research
Associates in Champaign.
alry Unit in the Army and was a WWII veteran. He also served
at the U.S. HQ Command in Shanghai as sergeant in charge of
the motor pool.
William D. Holmes (BS 51) died Nov. 30, 2011. He was 82.
Norman M. Lucas (BS 51) died Feb. 5. He was 82. Lucas
worked with Western Electric for 32 years, eventually becoming the Manager of Northeast Labor Relations for the
company.
Jeffrey P. Impens (BS 76, MS 81) died Jan. 24. He was 58.
Impens worked for Clark Dietz, SEC Donahue, Rust International, URS, Earth Tech and AECOM.
Donald W. Pfeifer (BS 59) died Dec. 4, 2011. He was 75.
Pfeifer worked for Wiss Janney Elstner & Associates from
1976-1998 and served on technical committees for the Precast Concrete Institute and the American Concrete Institute.
He published more than 70 technical papers over the course
of his career.
1970s
1940s
1980s
David D. Moore (MS 72) died Sept. 2, 2011. He was 65.
Moore served as the dam safety-emergency action plan
supervisor for the Grant County Public Utility District in
Ephrata, Wash., for 25 years.
1960s
Richard McConnell (MS 60) died Jan. 15. He was 87. McConnell was an aerospace engineer at the NASA Goddard
Space Flight Center and also a Director of Structural Engineering Service for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Robert S. McLeod (BS 62) died Nov. 25, 2011. McLeod
specialized in groundwater modeling, remediation, and
environmental cleanup. He founded Robert S. McLeod
and Associates in 1982.
Richard L. Rolf (MS 60) died Jan. 31. He was 76. Rolf
worked for 35 years at the Alcoa Research Laboratory and
was a registered professional engineer in Pennsylvania.
He was issued three patents for his work. By the time he
retired in 1995, he also had earned a reputation as a product design consultant and advised on problems that arose
in the fabrication of aluminum products.
Lt. Col. John P. Beeson (MS 47) died Nov. 28, 2011. He was 91.
Beeson worked as a civil engineer for the Army for 25 years
and later worked for the Texas Water Development Board
and Brown & Root. He finished his career at the University of
Texas, where he served as the chief of construction inspection
for the entire university system.
Col. Howard W. Spence (BS 40) died Sept. 21, 2010. He was
93. Spence served in the Army Air Corps during WWII and
joined the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps after retiring from the Army.
Paul R. Tutt (BS 49) died Dec 16, 2011. He was 85. Tutt
worked as a traffic engineer for the Texas Highway Department for 27 years. He then served as the assistant director at
the University of Tennessee Transportation Research Center.
1930s
1950s
William L. Bost (BS 52) died Jan. 21. He was 81. Bost
served in the Army from 1954-56.
He worked with ET Simonds Construction Company from 1970 until
2005, serving as Vice President and
Operations Manager until 2004.
Dean R. Felton (BS 51) died Feb.
10. He was 85. Felton served as a
member of the last mounted Cav-
Dan S. Bechly (BS 43) died Dec. 24, 2011. He was 89. Bechly
was a nationally recognized railroad bridge engineer who
worked with the Illinois Central Railroad for 40 years. He was
a life member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the
American Railway Engineering Association, and the American
Railway Bridge and Building Association.
Dean Felton
Josiah S. Cooper Jr. (BS 39) died Dec. 26, 2011. He was 93.
Cooper served in the Navy and was stationed on the USS Alabama during WWII. He also worked as a cartographer for the
U.S. Geological Survey and later as a civil engineer for the Illinois Department of Transportation.
Thomas B. Sear (BS 36) died Dec. 14, 2011. He was 97. Sear
taught at Cornell and at Rochester University and was named
Engineer of the Year by the Rochester Engineering Society in
1969. Sear also began his own firm, the Sear-Brown Group,
which specialized in residential land development.
Clyde E. Kesler (BS 43, MS 46)
(1922-2011)
C
lyde E. Kesler, CEE professor emeritus, died Dec. 30, 2011. He was 89.
Born on May 7, 1922, in Condit
Township, Ill., Kesler graduated from
Champaign High School in 1939 and
from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a B.S. in Civil Engineering in 1943.
After earning his undergraduate degree, Kesler enlisted in the U.S.
Army, serving during WWII in General Patton’s Third Army and attaining the rank of captain. After the war,
he served until 1946 in the U. S. Army
Corps of Engineers Reserves with the
ultimate rank of major. He received his
M.S. degree in 1946 in civil engineering with an emphasis on structural
engineering from the University of Illinois.
Beginning in 1947, Kesler held positions in the University of Illinois’ Department of Theoretical and Applied
Mechanics (TAM), becoming a Professor in TAM in 1962. Thereafter he held
appointments in TAM and Civil Engi-
neering jointly. He retired
in 1982 with the rank of
Emeritus Professor.
During his career, Kesler was active in a number of technical and professional organizations,
including the American
Concrete Institute (president in 1967), the American Society of
Civil Engineers, and the American Society
of Engineering Education. Technically,
Kesler was an expert in the properties of
cements, additives (for example, fibers,
for which he held a patent), and aggregates of many kinds for reinforced concrete. He carried out basic research on fatigue strength, cracking and durability of
concrete materials. He was called to be a
consultant by scores of companies in the
United States and overseas.
Kesler was honored with many awards,
including the prestigious American Concrete Institute Landau Award in 1971 and
the Halliburton Education Leadership
Award from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
College of Engineering in 1982. In 1977,
he was elected to
membership in the
National Academy of
Engineering.
Kesler achieved
fame when in 1970 instead of having his concrete class cast the
usual cylinders and small beams, he challenged them to build a concrete canoe as
a class project. A year later Purdue had
joined in the building and racing competition, and the concept blossomed nationally and internationally, today involving thousands of college students worldwide. By 1987 the American Society of
Civil Engineers had agreed to manage the
competitions. The Illinois Team, named
the Boneyard Yacht Club after a creek going through campus, marked its 40th year
in 2011. Kesler remained a supporter of
the team until his death, and he is known
at Illinois as the Father of the Concrete Canoe. —W.J. Hall
i
Wilson H. Tang
Tang had a distinguished academic career in
which he made significant
contributions in the areas of
safety and reliability analysis in civil engineering. He
had led the profession in
promoting and pioneering
the use of reliability-based
methods for risk mitigation
and design in various areas,
particularly in geotechnical engineering. His expertise covered application of
probability methods to the
wide area of civil infrastructure engineering and management. He had more than
250 technical publications and his co-authored book (with A. H-S Ang), “Probability Concepts in Engineering Planning &
Design,” revised in 2007, has been widely
adopted by top universities worldwide.
Tang’s many awards included the
State of the Art award, Fellow and Dis-
tinguished Member
from the American
Society of Civil Engineering, T.K. Hsieh
Award from the Institution of Civil Engineers U.K., U.S. Offshore Energy Center’s Hall of Fame,
Guggenheim Fellow,
Harza Best Paper
Award, Natural Science Award from
the Ministry of Education of China, Fellow and Vice President of the Hong Kong
Academy of Engineering Sciences, and
Honorary Professorship at several major
universities. A prestigious keynote lecture, the Wilson Tang Lecture, of the serial
conferences of International Symposium
on Geotechnical Safety & Risk, was inaugurated in 2009 to recognize and honor
Tang’s significant contributions. i
(1943-2012)
W
ilson H. Tang, who taught in the
department for 27 years, died
Jan. 5 in Chicago. He was 68.
Born in Hong Kong, Tang earned
bachelor’s (1966) and master’s (1967)
degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate (1969) from Stanford University,
all in civil engineering. He taught in
the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for
27 years, until joining the Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology
as Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Civil Engineering in 1996.
Under his leadership, that department
evolved into one of the best in Asia. He
retired in 2009, but remained active in
research, teaching and public service.
CEE at Illinois Alumni Dinner in Chicago
C
hicago-area alumni, CEE faculty, students
and friends of the department gathered
March 4 at the Union League Club in Chicago
for the annual CEE at Illinois Alumni Dinner in
Chicago. The event included a cocktail reception, dinner, the presentation of the CEE Alumni
Association awards, and a department update
by Professor and Head Amr S. Elnashai.
For the CEE students who signed up to attend the dinner, the day also included a tour of
the project to improve Lower Wacker Drive. The
department would like to thank the following
individuals for hosting the tour and making presentations to students: Oswaldo Chaves, Anthony Albert, Cliff Olszewski, John Naughton (BS 89,
MS 91), Brian Racine (BS 00), Dan Burke (BS 92,
MS 93) and Andrew Keaschall (BS 04, MS 05).
With gratitude, CEE acknowledges the following sponsors of the alumni dinner:
Gold Level
Trotter and Associates Inc.
Silver Level
AECOM
Benesch
Bowman, Barrett & Associates
Burns & McDonnell
Greeley and Hansen
Hanson Professional Services Inc.
H. W. Lochner Inc.
Milhouse Engineering & Construction
RJN Group
TranSystems
Above, Pedro Cevallos (MS 77, PhD
Wight and Company
80), Primera Engineers. Below left,
Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc. Christopher King (BS 81) of Robin-
Bronze Level
Baxter & Woodman Inc.
CB&I
Clark Dietz
Crawford, Murphy & Tilly Inc.
Donohue & Associates Inc.
Epstein
F. H. Paschen
John Frauenhoffer
HDR Inc.
HNTB
Ingenii LLC
Larry Jaworski, Brown & Caldwell
Tracy Lundin, Fermilab
MWH Global
Ricondo and Associates
Steve Raupp, Sargent & Lundy
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP
W. E. O’Neil Construction
V3 Companies
40
son Engineering Ltd. with students
(from left) Nam-Jeong Choi and Hao
Luo. Below right, student Chenchen
Liu with Paula Pienton (BS 85),
AECOM, and Jack Barrett (BS 52),
Bowman, Barrett and Associates.
At left, Assistant Professor Cassandra Rutherford speaks at the
dinner. Below, (from left) Professor
Charlie Werth, David and Frances
Sabatini, and Professor Al Valocchi.
cee.illinois.edu/alumni_awards_2012.
2012 CEE Alumni Awards
The Civil and Environmental Engineering Alumni Association is pleased to announce the 2012 recipients of its Distinguished Alumnus/Alumna
Award and Young Alumnus/Alumna Achievement Award. The Distinguished Alumnus/Alumna Award recognizes professional accomplishments or
unique contributions to society by alumni of the department. The Young Alumnus/Alumna Achievement Award recognizes a recent graduate who
has achieved distinction in his or her field and reached a level of accomplishment significantly greater than that of other recent graduates. The honorees were recognized at the Chicago Regional Dinner Meeting in March.
From left: (front row) Adrienne Menniti, Ralph Anderson and Gary Klein, (back row) David Sabatini and Michael Kohn, the
son of award winner Starr Kohn, who was honored posthumously.
Starr Kohn
Distinguished Alumnus Award
Young Alumna Award
Adrienne Menniti, Ph.D.
(MS 03, PhD 08)
Process Engineer
CH2M HILL
Portland, Oregon
For technical expertise and
leadership in the evaluation, modeling and design
of wastewater treatment
facilities, and for outstanding
performance in teaching and
training of process principles
to wastewater treatment
operations personnel.
Ralph E. Anderson
(BS 77)
Project Manager
Fehr-Graham &
Associates
Springfield, Illinois
For outstanding commitment
to the advancement and
implementation of bridge
design concepts in the state
of Illinois; for extensive dedication to research in the areas
of design, seismology and
bridge capacity; for superior
technical and administrative
leadership as State Bridge
Engineer; and for exemplary service to the Civil and
Environmental Engineering
Department at Illinois.
Gary J. Klein, P.E., S.E.
(BS 73, MS 75)
Senior Principal and
Executive Vice President
Wiss, Janney, Elstner
Associates Inc.
Northbrook, Illinois
Starr D. Kohn, Ph.D., P.E.
(BS 76, MS 78)
(1953-2008)
Awarded posthumously, for
outstanding leadership in
the development of innovative solutions in pavement
engineering in the areas of
For significant and lasting
pavement management,
impact on research and
non-destructive testing,
practice in the fields of failure improved long-term paveinvestigations and strucment performance, forensic
tural assessments, and for
studies and construction
outstanding contributions
troubleshooting, and for
conveying knowledge from dedicated service to the civil
these investigations to the
engineering profession.
structural engineering community.
David A. Sabatini, Ph.D.
(BS 81)
David Ross Boyd
Professor & Sun Oil
Company Endowed Chair
of Civil Engineering and
Environmental Science
University of Oklahoma
Norman, Oklahoma
For outstanding leadership
and pioneering contributions in the field of hazardous
waste remediation using
surfactants and the development of appropriate and
sustainable technologies
for addressing water quality
issues in remote villages of
developing countries.
“To thy happy children of the future,
those of the past send greetings.”
C
lass of 2012 graduates might enjoy seeing this photo of their counterparts of 100 years ago. Frederick S. Simmons, the son of CEE alumnus
John W. Simmons (BS 1912), sent this photo showing the University of Illinois
civil engineering graduating class of 1912. His father is the third from the left
in the front row.
“John W. Simmons Jr. (1888 - 1958) was born in Keithsburg, Ill.,” Frederick Simmons writes. “His father, John W. Simmons Sr., had moved there from
Pennsylvania a few years earlier to supervise the construction of a railroad
bridge spanning the Mississippi. He graduated from the University of Illinois
in 1912 with the degree B.S. in Civil Engineering. (His brother James L. received a B.S in Pharmacology also from Illinois in 1914.) Following graduation,
he worked for a construction company in Illinois before entering the Army in
1917. After his discharge in 1919, he returned to Illinois, where he married his
sister Winifred’s friend Grace. Shortly thereafter he accepted a position with
a consulting firm in New York City that specialized in bridge design and construction. Around 1930 he took a position with the New Jersey Department of
Highways; subsequently he worked as a civil engineer within the federal civil
service. He had three children: John W. III, a computer programmer; Dorothy
A., a U.S. Army nurse ; and Frederick S., an aerospace engineer.”
Our observation is that the graduates of today are more numerous, more
diverse, and less somber — maybe because they get to wear fancy caps and
gowns instead of those stiff collars.
Aviation
Bridges
Buildings
Construction Services
Cost Management
Electrical
where will your
road lead?
APTech is led by an accomplished group of civil engineers,
including many University of Illinois alumni, who have built a
company around excellence in pavement engineering. Our
roads and airports have led us throughout the world, from
India to Korea to Urbana, Illinois. Where will yours lead?
Professional growth
through
Environmental
Geotechnical
Highways
engineering excellence
Local Roads
Alfred Benesch & Company
Site Planning
Railroad
Stormwater
Survey
Transportation
Value Engineering
Wastewater
pavement management systems · pavement sustainability ·
pavement evaluation and design · research · training
Scan with
your phone’s
QR Code
reader to go
to APTech’s
website.
@AlfredBeneschCo
www.benesch.com
www.appliedpavement.com
Get your CEE on!
Shop online at the CEE store and show your CEE pride.
New items are being added all the time.
my.cee.illinois.edu/buy
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory MC-250
Non-Profit Organization
U.S. POSTAGE PAID
Permit No. 75
Champaign, IL 61820

Summer 2012 - Civil and Environmental Engineering

Transcription

Similar documents

American Woodhenge: Archaeoastronoraly at Cahokia

Chocolate Vine/Five Leaf Akebia - Illinois Natural History Survey

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Accents On-Line - Illinois Council on the Teaching of Foreign

orrrustee`Gq - College of Lake County

XL Tech, XL Internet

Office Locations Office Locations - Man-Tra

APAPCD - Association of Middle