Also Inside: Small Scale; Big Solutions Deepening the Talent PoolExelon Powers Student Internships Jumping in with Both Feet

Engineering Design TeamStudents Engineer Winning Robots

Fall/Winter 2015

Fall/Winter 2015

1 Message from the Dean

2 Small Scale; Big Solutions Nanotechnology research in the College

Philanthropy6 Deepening the Talent Pool Knowles gift creates new programs

8 Jumping in with Both Feet Young alumni tackle that first job

12 Exelon Powers Student Internships Summer work sets students on the career path

14 CAT in the College Longtime company presence on campus supports student achievements

16 Engineering Design Team Students Engineer Winning Robots

19 Around the College

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

The College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago publishes UIC Engineering. We welcome your comments and suggestions. Please direct questions about this issue to Joel Super (jsuper@uic.edu).

Associate Director of Communications: Joel SuperEditorial Writer: Kirsten GortonPhotographers: Bart Harris Graphic Designer: Edward LawlerCopyright © 2015

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

Table of Contents

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Dear friends, alumni, and students,

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

Message from the Dean

From the perspective of the entire university, total enrollment for the fall semester is up nearly four percent from last year’s total, at 29,048. The student population includes 17,511 undergraduate, 8,114 graduate, 3,007 professional, and 416 continuing education students.

I am pleased to note that we’ve also increased our faculty numbers in the College, hiring eight new assistant professors and five new associate professors. This impressive group includes four recipients of the highly competitive National Science Foundation CAREER award, an accolade that provides five years of grant funding to outstanding early career faculty for integrating their innovative research with undergraduate and graduate education.

I believe that demand from employers for our graduates plays a significant role in the increasing demand from students to earn UIC College of Engineering degrees. In fact, over the last two years, more than 500 companies have hired UIC engineering students and graduates for internships and full-time positions, including some who have hired five, ten, or more people.

Numbers like these tell an important story about our success as an institution. But, of course, numbers don’t tell the whole story. Institutions are made up of individuals, and knowing a bit about their stories gives us a glimpse of the many ways that the education available here creates personal opportunity. As the articles that follow illustrate, these stories of research discoveries, career trajectories, and educational experiences are as diverse as the dynamic city of Chicago that we call home.

Yours sincerely,

Pete Nelson, PhD Dean

Total Undergraduate Enrollment

2015 2955 8.5 % Percent Increase

2014 2724

2015 1604 33.3 % Percent Increase

2014 1203

2015 MS 1006 53.1% Percent Increase

2014 657

2015 PhD 489 10.6% Percent Increase

2014 442

Graduate Enrollment by Degree

Total Graduate Enrollment

“… as our student body grows, the quality and diversity of students

continues to grow as well.”

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SmallScale/ Big SolutionsFaculty Use Nanotechnology to Fix Large-Scale Problems

By Rick Asa

A nanoparticle

is 20,000

times smaller

than the

width of a

human hair.

3

SmallScale/ Big SolutionsFaculty Use Nanotechnology to Fix Large-Scale Problems

By Rick Asa

the more than 8,300 vineyards in the United States alone, a commercialized patch could have an enormous positive economic and environmental impact.

Yarin and his team are exploring how other high-value products could be created from nanofibers such as improved cleaning wipes; membranes to filter out nanoparticles in water remediation or for the pharmaceutical industry; and biomedical applications including producing barriers to fungi, bacteria, and virus penetration.

Nanobiology Fights Human Disease Combatting human diseases forms the epicenter of some of the College of Engineering’s nanotechnology research. Michael Stroscio, PhD, and his team in the Departments of Bioengineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering, are using man-made quantum dots (nanoparticles made of a semiconductor material) to investigate their potential for treating disease.

A UIC distinguished professor and the Richard and Loan Hill Professor of Engineering, Stroscio has been able to identify cancer cells by exposing them to yellow quantum dots carrying molecules that attach to receptors on the cancer cell surface and appear as light under a microscope. “They’re like little light bulbs,” Stroscio says. “Cancer cells are tens of microns in size, but quantum dots are only 10 nanometers, so they pinpoint cancer-related integrins [receptors] on the cell.”

Practical medical applications may include expanded capabilities for detecting very young cancer cells and cellular dysfunction, tracking stem cell movement and differentiation—which would be pertinent to a range of cures, including for colon and oral cancers—and manipulating neurons to alter neurological signals that are related to brain diseases. For example, using quantum dots with electric

fields may make it possible to control neurons. “If you had an overactive neuron, you could decrease the level of activity,” he notes. That, in turn, could prevent or reverse neurological disorders and diseases.

Using Nano-spores to Detect and Collect Water Vikas Berry, PhD, associate professor and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering, and his research group put graphene (see sidebar) quantum dots on living

bacterial spores as a means to measure humidity, with potential applications ranging from food storage to finding water on other planets. By putting the dots on living bacterial spores, they create a Nano-Electro-Robotic Device (facetiously called a NERD) that contracts or expands when the humidity around the spore changes, which affects the way electrons move through the graphene quantum dots and can be measured with electrodes applied to the end of the spore.

This gives the whole device a high activity level and mobility, said Berry, associate professor andinterim head of the Department of Chemical Engineering. The device enabled

Faculty across the College’s six departments are working at the nanoscale to find innovative solutions to crop

failure, bridge collapse, and other big challenges. Here, we look at a few of the promising solutions, parts of a research field that is full of tiny things with potential for delivering huge impact.

A Nanofiber “Band-Aid” for Plants The wounds or tears caused by routine plant pruning are an open door for fungal infections that can drastically reduce crop yields. Alexander Yarin, PhD, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, has helped to mitigate this problem through a nanofiber patch he developed which is now being tested in California vineyards, on Illinois fruit trees, and on timber overseas.

The patches are made from a dense network of nanofibers, and are applied, like a Band-Aid™, to a grape vine or fruit tree following pruning. They have been shown to prevent common microscopic fungal spores from entering the plant, thereby preventing possible infection, yet their matrix still allows the plant to “breathe,” which speeds healing of the tear and prevents rotting.

The patches work because the webbing of the matrix is only three to five micrometers apart, while fungi, which have caused the loss of up to 40 percent of the grape harvest in some countries, are 20 to 50 micrometers in size. To put the size into perspective, a human hair ranges from about 20 to 180 micrometers in diameter.

The nanofiber web is made by blending soy protein, an abundant agricultural waste product, with a synthetic polymer in about a 50:50 proportion. This solution could replace wax and tar patches, which have been used to block the fungus in the past but interfere with healing and can cause soil contamination. Considering

F

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

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

4

his team to differentiate between minute changes in humidity at a very low humidity range, currently a big challenge. The key is the spores, which are extremely sensitive to changes in moisture.

The approach Berry and his team developed could take advantage of the unique biomolecular structure of other micro-organisms and their incredible sensitivity. That property

could also potentially be used to control cells, conduct biochemical analysis, and track molecular activity, which has applications in areas including bioelectronics, biosensors, and biomimetics, or biomimicry—a field that seeks to emulate how nature solves problems.

Some facsimile of Berry’s discovery might even be implanted to monitor biological function at a level of sensitivity that would far exceed that of the machines used today.

Creating Self-Cleaning Materials with Nanostructured Coatings Like Professor Yarin, Professor Constantine Megaridis, PhD, and his students look for discoveries that can be commercialized, preferably with sustainable, abundant, environmentally-friendly materials.

A pioneer in manipulating surfaces to make them superhydrophobic (extremely water repellent) or superhydrophilic (extremely effective in attracting water), Megaridis has used nanoparticles to prepare self-cleaning coatings that can be used on a wide variety of surfaces, including metals, glass, plastics, paper, and fabric. The coatings can use either an organic or water-based solvent and be customized for the material being treated. “The ability to make coatings out of common ingredients that have different functionalities is unique about what we do,” he says.

Water hitting these coated surfaces beads on contact. The beads collect and remove dirt, dust, and other debris while rolling along, leaving behind a clean surface. Key potential high-end applications of such self-cleaning coatings include the aerospace, shipping, electronics, medical implant, building, and home windows and home siding industries.

Megaridis has also done work with great humanitarian potential in areas of the world with scarce water reserves. In a perfect example of biomimicry, he designed a nano-engineered fabric that can collect drinking water from fog. His design imitates the ability of a beetle, living in Africa’s Namib Desert, to collect water. The beetle has a textured back that traps moisture in the air from early morning fog. When the beetle becomes thirsty, it can tip its back end up, letting the collected water droplets roll into its mouth.

His lab is also focusing on “functionalizing” fabrics for other uses. For example, Joseph Mates, a postdoctoral researcher in the

Megaridis Lab, is exploring how nanocellulose might be manipulated for a host of functional filtration applications.

“The tensile strength of cellulose is higher than steel’s, it’s a renewable material that can constantly be refreshed and supplied, but there are challenges in working with it,” Mates says. “That’s why our industrial partners are interested. There’s a learning curve to harnessing these advantages for economic viability.”

Dissipating Heat in the Nano-world Needs PrecisionUtilizing graphene, a pure carbon material with extraordinary ability to dissipate heat, could improve function in virtually every nanotech device. But creating sheets of graphene large enough to layer on nano-electronics isn’t yet possible because producing films large enough to use introduces flaws at the grain boundaries that negatively affect heat transfer capacity.

Research by Amin Salehi-Khojin, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, and his research group (in collaboration with researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Boise State University) solved this conundrum for researchers and developers alike by discovering why the heat doesn’t dissipate across the graphene film as quickly as would be expected. (see sidebar for more on graphene)

When single-layer graphene crystals are neatly lined up, heat transfer occurs just as predicted by theory. But if even two inter-connecting crystals have misaligned edges, the heat transfer is ten times lower than theoretically predicted. And, as graphene films get bigger, the misalignment becomes more likely.

Salehi-Khojin’s team developed a finely-tuned experimental system that lays down a graphene film onto a silicon-nitrate membrane only

Graphene is a single, tightly packed layer

of carbon atoms linked in a chicken-wire pattern. It’s the

thinnest known compound at one atom thick, incredibly light (1 square meter weighs about

0.77 milligrams) and equally strong—up to 300 times stronger

than steel, with tensile strength of 150,000,000 psi. It is an

unequaled conductor of heat and electricity, fantastic at light absorption, and perfect for spin

transport, where the flow of electrons with defined spin is

manipulated via magnetic field.

This makes graphene invaluable in research that involves quantum

mechanics, the place where nanoparticles dwell. Graphene

plays a major role in much of the nanotechnology research done at

the UIC College of Engineering.

5

four-millionths of an inch thick. It can also measure the transfer of heat from a single graphene crystal to another. The system is sensitive to even the tiniest deviations in the heat flow, enabling the team to quantify the effect of small-scale structural variations on the thermal properties of graphene.

This break-through brings product developers closer to using graphene more efficiently to dissipate heat and improve electronic functions in potentially hundreds of nanotech devices.

Big Safety Improvements from Tiny Sensors Following the horrifying Interstate 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis in August 2007, engineers scrambled to assure Americans that the nation’s bridges would not begin to fail en masse.

Improving fault detection that could prevent disasters like the one in Minneapolis—or in thousands of high-

rise buildings, roadways, and aircraft—helps drive Didem Ozevin, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Materials Engineering. She is developing micro sensors, or MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical-systems), that could detect structural faults very early.

Ozevin’s MEMS are tiny, making them cost effective and able to be more efficiently mass-produced. Potentially, virtually every square inch of a structure could be monitored in real time, making early detection and correction of structural faults possible.

The tiny sensor systems demonstrate both practical and economic value for the aerospace industry because they could be placed anywhere on an aircraft prone to structural failure yet add little weight, avoiding added fuel costs.

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

Ozevin says nanotechnology and her MEMS research naturally overlap because the two are interdependent for developing new devices that will rely on nanomaterials still being tested for their versatility and properties—particularly graphene.

For example, two important devices used in nanotechnology research are both MEMS devices: the tunneling-tip microscope that detects individual atoms and the atomic force microscope that is used for placement of molecules and atoms on a nanosubstrate. Both facilitate nanoscale discoveries because they provide much higher resolution than optical microscopes.

Just the Beginning of Great Things In a landmark talk more than 50 years ago, the visionary physicist Richard Feynman saw a new understanding of nanotechnology coming.

“It is a staggeringly small world that is below. At the atomic level, we have new kinds of forces and new kinds of possibilities, new kinds of effects … [the challenges] of manufacture and reproduction of materials will be quite different.”1

Nanotech researchers at the UIC College of Engineering are accustomed to tackling those challenges, while also expanding nanotechnology’s boundaries and demonstrating its potential in ways Feynman couldn’t have predicted. :1Richard Feynman, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” Caltech Engineering and Science 23, no. 5 (Feb. 1960)

A nanoparticle

is 100,000 times smaller

than a 12 point dot.

➡

This is a 12 point dot.

66

A lumnus and Engineering Advisory Board member Jeffrey Niew had four good

job offers when he graduated from UIC in May of 1988 as a mechanical engineer. Three—Ingersoll Rand, Inland Steel, and ComEd—were in the Midwest. But the one in California won. By the first day of June he had moved across country and was working for Hewlett-Packard.

Twenty-seven years and a rewarding career later, Niew (BS ’88) is president and CEO of Knowles Corporation, an

Deepening the Talent Pool

Knowles Corporation gift aims to encourage women engineers

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

The donation funds a scholarship program for female engineering students and a new summer engineering program for female high school students—both aimed at helping young women start to build their engineering careers. This gift aims to increase and diversify the pool of highly qualified engineers working in Chicago. Graduating more engineers, Niew believes, will help drive economic prosperity locally and nationally by creating the environment that can produce the next Google, Apple, or Microsoft. “If we don’t encourage women to become engineers, we miss out on a large segment of the population and the diversity of ideas they bring” he says. “It’s also about having enough engineers to do the research, then the product development and actual production, then, ultimately, creating a company that generates value for people through jobs and opportunities.”

Nova Xu, a senior at Walter Payton College Prep, plans to be one of those engineers. Xu was among the 22 high school juniors and seniors who attended the inaugural three-week Women in Engineering Summer Program (WIESP) that the Knowles gift made possible. “It’s always good to have more voices, and I think the voice that’s especially lacking right now is the female’s voice in engineering,” she wrote in her program evaluation.

Students from both the Chicago Public Schools system and suburban high schools applied for a spot in the WIESP program. In order to be

by Joel Super

77

interviewed, applicants were required to have a 3.2 overall GPA and As and Bs in their math and science classes. The curriculum, which focused this year on civil engineering and com-puter science units, was designed to be varied, exciting, and hands-on. “Choosing the curriculum was difficult. There was no way we could highlight all of our majors.” said Elsa Soto, assistant director, Academic Resource Center, who oversaw the program. “We wanted to provide a short but intense program but didn’t want to overwhelm students; we wanted it to be fun and something they enjoyed every day.”

Field trips to the Chicago Transit Authority; to the College’s Electron-ic Visualization Lab (EVL); to the iconic Chicago architecture firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; and to Knowles headquarters rounded out the presentations and workshops. Judging by the anonymous responses to the program’s exit survey, students regarded this facet of the program highly. One student wrote “I rate the field trips a ‘9.’ My favorites were the EVL and Knowles Corporation. I loved the part at Knowles where we dressed in lab stuff and toured the clean room, and I also loved the big screens at EVL. It was just cool.”

Exit survey responses also indicate that the program hit the mark overall. One student wrote, “There isn’t anything like this program for students like me where I live. Thank you for providing me the opportunity to expand my horizons and discover a possible future career path.” Another commented about the civil engineering unit, “I enjoyed the ‘Cities & Structures’ unit the most because I felt like I really got to get my hands dirty and think and act like an engineer by designing bridges.”

How did these students think about spending three weeks of their sum-mer investigating engineering? Most felt the program lasted just the right amount of time, but there were outli-ers who wanted more. Said one, “Too short!” Wrote another, “I think four or five weeks would be better.” Howev-er they tweak this inaugural version of the program, says Soto, “We want them to have a positive experience here so they see us as the right place to pursue an engineering degree and know they’re going to get all the resources they need for success.”

Hard working students like these, with a passion to acquire new knowledge, are exactly the sort Niew and his col-leagues at Knowles think need to be cultivated and encouraged, both for their benefit and society’s. “You have

to have perseverance and a willing-ness to work hard. That passion takes you a long way in life,” Niew says.

To help encourage young talent, a portion of the Knowles gift is devoted to scholarships. The scholarships will help ensure access to an UIC engi-neering education for young women with that drive to learn and for whom the scholarship will make life a lit-tle easier. The new scholarships will provide three incoming freshmen a $10,000 scholarship over two years and also award each of five continuing students a $2,000 scholarship.

Niew thinks it’s money well spent, a way for this local technology company to foster great engineering careers, improve the way we do things, and help maintain U.S. technological preeminence. “If you think about the things that have changed our lives over the last 20 to 30 years, the U.S. has been at the forefront,” he says, pointing to the way engineering-driv-en advances like the rise of the Internet have revolutionized the way we do many things. One day in the not-so-distant future, an engineering degree earned with the help of the Knowles Corporation may just equip a hard-working UIC graduate to lead a technology business revolution of her own. :

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

8

Jumping inwith

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

by Kirsten Gorton

8

Siham Hussein (BS ’15)Degree: computer scienceJob: software engineer at Google“I love the challenge and the real-world applications that come with program-ming,” says Siham Hussein, who is a few months into her full-time position at Google in New York City. As a software engineer on an infrastructure team, she helps manage internal tools that process and aggregate display-advertisement data that allows Google to report the number of clicks, views, and interactions to its customers.

After coming to the United States with her family when she was 10, Hussein spent most of her time playing on their new desktop computer. “I drew on Paint all day long,” she says. “I guess you could say that’s where my interest started.” Her programming class at Chicago’s Von Steuben High School is where she discovered an outlet for her fascination with computers. But even then, she never imagined she’d end up as the first computer science undergraduate at UIC to win an outstanding TA award or as president of UIC’s Women in Computer Science (WICS) group, encouraging fellow women to become computer scientists.

Hussein sees in hindsight how her under-graduate education prepared her to enter the workforce with confidence. “Without the course work and research experience at the UIC BITS Laboratory, I don’t believe I would have made it where I am today,” she says. That includes landing her Ama-zon internship last year, after connecting with a representative at a women’s com-puter science conference under UIC’s auspices, subsequently leading to three job offers before graduation.

While Hussein admits the work at Google is challenging, she knows the rewards are bigger. “I want to make an impact in the world, and I think I can do that with com-puter science. It’s a very versatile field, so I feel like all doors are open for me.”

99

David Klawitter (BS ’15)Degree: civil engineeringJob: civil engineer at Mackie ConsultantsEnvironmental sustainability became David Klawitter’s passion during his undergraduate years at UIC. Having worked on both the regulatory and engineering sides of sustainability while he was in school— interning with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and with a private engineering firm—Klawitter is positioning himself to be a leader in the civil engineering field. “I love the resources UIC offers, because it isn’t just a university, but it’s a university with-in a city. It gives you great opportunities to interact beyond the walls of your school,” he says.

This external educational focus is a long way from the high school student who was almost exclusively focused on academics. “It wasn’t until I arrived at UIC that I opened up to the social aspects of education.” Klawitter’s epiph-any came during his freshman year when he joined EcoCampus, UIC’s student sustain-ability organization. He then served as the group’s president and became active with UIC’s Sustainability Thinking Committee and the Chancellor’s Energy and Sustain-ability Committee. “It’s amazing the number of people you can work with and things you can do at UIC. But, I mean, that’s the point of college: to discover your interests and start dedicating your time to them.”

Since starting his full time career, Klawitter is dedicating his time to water resources, doing stormwater and flood-plain management work as a civil engineer for Mackie Consultants, part of the Burke Group. He also plays an active role in the College’s Engineering Alumni Association.

For Klawitter, what’s important is doing the most good that he can as an individual. “Engineering is the field where I’ve gotten the tools, training, and knowledge that will allow me to be the best person I can be and allow me to have the biggest impact that I can.”

See more about David in Around the College on page 19.

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Frank Marotta (BS ’14)Degree: electrical engineering Job: controls integration engineer at General Motors“I’ve always been a car guy,” says 38-year-old Frank Marotta, who now works as a controls integration engi-neer at General Motors’ historic Milford Proving Grounds. Six years ago, his life looked much different as he trained in Boston to repair luxury vehicles while playing music with his wife, a folk singer. Today, they live in Ann Arbor—now with two daughters—and Marotta is in his element.

“It’s a very cool place. I drive a lot and sometimes take prototype vehicles off property to work on at home.” His main responsibilities include evaluating the preproduction vehicles’ software pack-ages and working on the company’s most advanced electric car arriving on the market next year: the Cadillac CT6 plug-in hybrid.

While he sees the irony of training to work on internal combustion engines only to switch to electrification work, learning about the possibility of electric vehicles and other alternative propul-sion technologies is what motivated him to go back to school. His passion for green mobility along with his electrical engineering courses and two internships at Tesla Motors in Silicon Valley prepared him to become an expert in the growing field.

“I always liked to take things that people were doing and find ways of improving them—that’s very true to who I am,” says Marotta. “I think it’s good to feel like you’re going to be challenged.” He finds that engineering offers him that oppor-tunity every day. “You show up to work and there are problems. And people have tried to solve them. They’ve put their best foot forward, and you can be the next person with a fresh set of eyes, a fresh set of ideas, maybe a slightly different skill set, to fix them.”

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Alejandro Vera (BS ’15)Degree: mechanical engineeringJob: mechanical engineer at 20/10 Engineering Group, LLCAt the age of 26, Alejandro Vera realized he needed a college degree to fulfill his dreams. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be what I thought was called a professional inventor,” he says. “I didn’t know that was basically an engineer.” Initially skipping a college career to work in the family staffing business, Vera discovered the path to his vocation after enrolling at a community college.

His biggest motivation for going back to school, and, ultimately, for pursuing mechan-ical engineering at UIC, was the prospect of becoming a dad. Finding out his wife was expecting triplets had a huge impact on his determination to get it done. “I want to do well by my kids, and I always knew I wanted to be the type of dad whose kids could ask him any question with confidence that he could help,” he says.

Learning about his nontraditional work and educational path, he finds, has inspired many people because it shows there’s a place where you can achieve your goals on your schedule.

While being a full-time student, Vera also worked as a research assistant in UIC’s Micro/Nano Fluid Transport Laboratory, where he helped find more efficient heating, filtra-tion, and condensation applications using fluids on an extremely small scale. The most intellectually rewarding thing about engi-neering, he says, is working on projects that are brand new—what engineers call “white space.” “It doesn’t only happen in the lab; you can find your niche within a company by making products more efficient,” he notes. And that can be financially rewarding—a good thing when you have a family to raise.

Today, Vera has taken what he’s learned at UIC to 20/10 Engineering Group, LLC, a suburban Chicago engineering consulting firm. There, his goals are simple: “I’d like to contribute something tangible that helps people, but most of all, I want my kids to be proud.” :

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

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

bine efforts in establishing inroads to career opportunities.” The inroad for Bueno was field experience in energy delivery at ComEd’s downtown office. For Vadrevu, it was troubleshooting systems and facilitating alarm soft-ware at Exelon Generation’s power plant in Morris, Illinois.

To get to these places, both students took advantage of the College’s resources to polish the skills that would help them get their feet in the door. Bueno connected with peers in the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. “Some of the members recommended visiting the Engineer-ing Career Center,” says Bueno. “I’m glad I did. The staff there helped me shape my résumé and practice interview skills.”

Exelon Powers Student Internships

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

1313

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

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

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

Exelon Powers Student Internships

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

by Kirsten Gorton

14

Peoria-based Caterpillar Inc. (CAT), a generous and long-time UIC partner, continued

that tradition as the 2015 principle sponsor of EXPO, the College’s senior design competition. The company’s support helped provide students a public forum for their advanced design, pro-totyping, and applied research projects.

CAT’s more than 15 year history of support for engineering at UIC includes providing scholarship assistance for up to 12 recipients annually, as well as diverse programmatic and student-organization support, especially for

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

to these student groups and provide mentorship and career guidance.

The student-led organizations, in turn, have been active in outreach efforts that promote careers in STEM fields to Chicago high school students. For instance, with the CAT support, SHPE has sponsored Noches de Ciencias (Science Nights) for more than 700 Chicago students and their parents.

CAT has consistently hired UIC grad-uates and also assisted students with their professional development activi-ties through its support and participa-tion at Engineering Career Prep Day, Engineering Résumé Expo, and the College’s Engineering Career Fair.

EXPO at UIC has been proving for 26 years that the creative and the prac-tical coexist very nicely in the prac-

Longtime company presence on campus supports student achievements

Team: Hector Castaneda, Timothy Steadman, Janee Spruille, Michael Brannon, and Michael Getz

Category: Chemical Production II

Project: Fractionation and Transportation of Shale Gas

Team: Kyle Wise, John Clarke, Ashley Przybysz, Joe Andrews, and Steve Kwon

Category: UIC Infrastructures and Sustainability

Project: UIC High Bay Structural Testing Laboratory

15

tice of engineering. For students, the annual event marks the culmination of their undergraduate studies. CAT employees have been volunteering as project judges at the event for nearly two decades.

CAT and the College share a natu-ral affinity, given the fundamentally practical and creative nature of the CAT endeavor, which has relied on engineering innovation beginning with its introduction of the steam-powered crawler tractor in the early twentieth century and continuing through its evolution into the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines, and diesel-electric locomotives.

At the College of Engineering, CAT finds intelligent, persistent, ingenious, and creative students who can help

continue this innovative history. These students must prepare themselves to excel in a broad range of areas critical to the manufacturing functions of international companies like CAT—ranging from logistics to manufactur-ing and from technical marketing to environmental health and safety.

CAT’s 2015 partnership with the College once again helped UIC engineering students showcase how they’re trained to confront everyday problems in a systematic, team-based, pragmatic way. Engineers who can offer companies like CAT innovative solutions that improve products, processes, and structures in all areas of engineering contribute to a robust economy, build satisfying careers, and improve lives for people all over the world. :

Engineering EXPO 2015

Sponsors

Principle SponsorCaterpillar Inc.

Sponsors:Elara Engineering

UIC Engineering Alumni Association

Susan (BS ’82) and Peter Errichiello Jr.

Shirley Felder (BS ’84)

Gregory R. Lewis (BS ’75, MS ’76)

Ali Khounsary (MS ’82, PhD ’87)

Kathy McGuire (BS ’90, MS ’94)

Molex

Peoples Gas with special thanks to

Joe Tassone (BS ’02, MBA ’06)

Team: Joseph Cecala, Thomas Derrig, Nazar Bodnarchuk, and Sara Krysik

Category: Mechanical Devices and Products

Project: Automated Reagent Dispensing Instrument

Team: Evan Kline-Wedeen (L) and Mark Connolly (R) with friend Noel Padiyil

Category: Medical Processes

Project: Body Weight Support System for Ambulatory Cancer Patient Rehabilitation

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

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

by Kirsten Gorton

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Jerry Sanders Creative Design Competition. This annual regional competition for teams that build remote-controlled robots is hosted at the Urbana campus where, last year, 29 teams competed.

Involvement in autonomous competi-tions (the IGVC and RMC) shows the team’s recent growth. “Reaching this level beyond remote-controlled robots has pushed them quite a bit technically,” says their faculty advisor Milos Zefran, PhD, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. “They had to learn about image processing, computer vision, navigation, and localization—which are relatively sophisticated robotics tasks that push an undergraduate student—and they’ve been really good at mastering them.”

Developing versatility is a hallmark of EDT members and encouraging peer mentorship is a key strategy for the team to maintain a winning edge in a

high-turnaround atmosphere. The team, for example, builds three robots for the MRDC, giving more new members increased hands-on experience. “It’s a good stepping stone for them to learn the ins and outs of robotics,” says past president Jasen Massey (MS ’15).

Massey, who joined the team while earning his master’s degree in mechani-cal engineering at UIC, had always been fascinated with robotics but, like many EDT members, had no background in the field before joining the group. “Since robotics is an expensive hobby, it’s not very easy to get into it, especially by yourself,” explains Bart Wyderski (BS ’16), mechanical engineering student and the team’s newly elected president, who had no previous robotics experi-ence either. “I was generally interested in mechanical things,” he says. “But once I found out about the resources available to me in EDT, I had to get involved.”

A

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

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fter NASA’s recent an-nouncement that Mars appears to be more than a frozen, desolate landscape,

the College’s Engineering Design Team (EDT) is more excited than ever to return to the NASA Robotics Mining Competition (RMC).

Participating for the first time two years ago in the competition at the Kennedy Space Center, the student-led, interdis-ciplinary engineering organization built a robot that could autonomously navigate a simulated Martian terrain, dig, and collect as much icy regolith simulant (loose, broken rock) as possible in 10 minutes—an objective that directly ben-efits NASA in finding innovative ways to robotically excavate well-insulated water ice. In their rookie year, UIC’s team placed ahead of half of the 34 com-peting schools. This year, they mined twice as much regolith, won third place for team spirit and third place overall against 45 other teams.

Apart from the RMC, EDT students also design and build robots for two other competitions: the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC), an annual international competition involv-ing 50 teams that complete a series of outdoor obstacle-course challenges; and the Midwestern Robotics Design Competition (MRDC)—formerly the

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

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

president. “The group definitely helps you become a more diverse engineer.”

And a more well-rounded person. The EDT spends more than 10,000 hours every year building robots. Those hours are spent directly applying engineer-ing principles from the classroom, but they’re also spent acquiring other skills critical for success. “I think these are some of our best educated students in the sense that they gain experience in project management, teamwork, leader-ship, and collaboration,” says Zefran.

The environment in the workshop at Roosevelt and Halsted functions much like a professional one. Working there often leads members to internships early in their undergraduate careers. Wyderski believes he would not have received his first internship without his EDT experience. “I’ve had my employers

say to me that my hands-on experience with design work was a deciding factor between hiring me and someone else,” he says. “Coming to the shop, doing milling and hands-on work, putting together robots—those things separate me from another person getting the same degree.”

In addition to a member’s personal re-turn on investment, the team sets goals to benefit the community with planned outreach events throughout the year. “What UIC offers EDT and what they’re

able to use and produce is too good not to be known,” says Massey, who invited Senator Dick Durbin to campus earlier this year. “The senator seemed very excited with what we’re doing. I’m hopeful that’ll help build support in robotics and engineering education.” EDT has also partnered with Project Lead the Way and an engineering summer camp for precollege students at UIC for tours of their facility and has gone off campus to promote

STEM at the International Manufac-turing Trade Show and the DuPage Children’s Museum and host events to introduce robotics at Chicago elemen-tary, middle, and high schools.

Outreach and innovation are key EDT goals. As the team begins a new year, major changes are in the works, includ-ing some complete robot redesigns. “Getting together and brainstorming, finding new combinations, trying new material types for the frame or drive trains—all that, I honestly love it,” says Wyderski. While NASA prepares for further robotic exploration on Mars, it’s conceivable that technology concepts being developed in the heart of Chi-cago may someday help advance the agency’s work. :

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History● UIC’s Chicago Engineering Design Team

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

Achievements● EDT has had first-place winning robots

in 2006, 2008, 2012, 2013, and 2014 at the Midwestern Robotic Design Competition (formerly the Jerry Sanders Creative Design Competition).

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

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

Sponsors

Upcoming EventsMarch 11–12, 2016 Midwestern Robotics Design Competition UIUC Urbana, IllinoisMay 16–20, 2016 NASA Robotics Mining Competition Kennedy Space Center Cape Canaveral, FloridaJune 3–6, 2016 Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition Oakland University Rochester, Michigan

Visit chicagoedt.org for more information.

To support improvements or expansion of student design space on campus, please contact Janet Kashuba at jkashuba@uic.edu or (312) 996-2168.

Advanced CircuitsAMDD10 StudioHemisphere GNSSHereMotorolaNewark element14Newhaven Display International, Inc.

nvidiaSamtecSickSOLIDWORKS®UICUIC College of EngineeringUS Digital

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

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Around the CollegeEngineering Wins ● UIC’s team won first place in the

2015 Campus RainWorks Chal-lenge, a national competition for green-infrastructure design hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protec-tion Agency, beating out 64 teams including UIUC, Georgetown Uni-versity, and the University of Mary-land. Members of the College who worked on the proposal to help mit-igate urban flooding included David Klawitter (BS ’15) and graduate student Lisha Wu, along with Profes-sor Ben O’Connor, PhD, Department of Civil & Materials Engineering, who advised the team.

● Professor Amin Salehi-Khojin, PhD, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, won a 2015 Chancellor’s Innovation Fund Proof of Concept, for the commercializa-tion of a lithium-air battery cell.

● The $5,000 top prize in UIC’s Concept2Venture Startup Challenge was claimed by computer engineering student Roy Moran (BS ’16) and business graduate student Aman Choudhury, who invented an auto-repair price aggregator they call Anautomy.

Professor Named Innovator of the YearThe Office of Technology Management named Professor Constantine Megaridis, PhD, mechanical and industrial engineering, UIC’s Innovator of the Year, recognizing his dedication to creating an inexpensive, portable fluid-testing device. Professor Megaridis heads the Micro/Nanoscale

Chancellor Amiridis and UIC winners of the Campus RainWorks Challenge

Aman Choudhury and engineering student Roy Moran (BS ’16)

Professor Constantine Megaridis, PhD

Fluid Transport Laboratory, where he developed patterned surfaces made up of chemical coatings that repel or attract liquid to test reactions between chemicals and substances. Potential applications include testing water samples for pollutants or contaminants or blood samples for disease-causing microbes.

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Senator Durbin and the Chicago EDT

UIC’s AIAA team at the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition

Two New Summer Camps on CampusSummer doesn’t equal downtime at UIC. While most students were away for the summer, the College welcomed precollege students to campus to have some fun with engineering:

● Twenty-two high school women participated in the College’s Women In Engineering Summer Program, a new three-week summer program for female students interested in engineering sponsored by Knowles Corporation. Projects ranged from building model sus-pension bridges and constructing prototype cities to programming on Arduinos and designing phone apps. (See p. 6 for more.)

● Forty-three students ages 10 to 18 spent a week on campus exploring engineering through hands-on activities, field trips, and tours of high-tech labs and design shops on UIC’s campus. The camp was hosted by the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering and directed by clinical professors Yeow Siow, PhD, and Jamie Szwalek, PhD.

Student Organization Successes● Illinois’s senior senator, Dick Durbin,

visited campus on April 17 to meet UIC’s Chicago Engineering Design Team. Members of the student-led

organization use their engineering skills to design and build robots for competition. (See p. 16 for more.)

● In their first competition, UIC’s American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) team brought home an award for landing their rocket closer to the pad than the 40 other teams (less than 150 feet away) at the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition. The event is the world’s largest remote-controlled rocket competition for universities, held each year in Green River, Utah. Team UIC also garnered this year’s sportsmanship award.

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Professor Amin Salehi-Khojin, PhD, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, was awarded $1,999,966 through an NSF-EFRI grant to research thermal transport in 2D materials for next-generation nanoelectronics.

Professor Salehi-Khojin was also awarded a $329,793 NSF grant to study the potential of inexpensive and earth-abundant materials as electrocatalysts for converting carbon dioxide to energy-rich chemicals.

Assistant Professor Brian Ziebart, PhD, and Associate Professor Tanya Berger-Wolf, both of the Department of Computer Science, were awarded a $554,348 NSF grant to develop computational tools for studying animal behaviors from remotely sensed data. Professor

Berger-Wolf also received a $300,000 NSF grant, with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Princeton University, to continue developing the Image-Based Ecological Information System (IBEIS) for animal sighting data. The total UIC share of that grant is $144,000.

Assistant Professor Sheng-Wei Chi, PhD, Department of Civil & Materials Engineering, was awarded a $358,294 NSF grant to research numerical modeling of nonlinear ultrasonic waves for assessing microstructural damage.

Associate Professor Jane Lin, PhD, Department of Civil & Materials Engineering, and Richard and Loan Hill Professor Ouri Wolfson, PhD, Department of Computer Science, received a $320,000 NSF grant to create a human-centered smart crowd-sourced urban delivery service system

for highly fragmented transport capacities. Functions will include pricing mechanisms, consumer/courier management strategies, routing and delivery algorithms, and real-time data collection and analysis tools. The project builds on a collaboration between a technology industrial partner, UIC, and Northwestern University. Total funding for the project is $1 million.

Assistant Professor Brian Chaplin, PhD, Department of Chemical Engineering, received a $506,000 NSF CAREER Award to develop a new class of reactive electrochemical membranes for sustainable water treatment applications, including point-of-use

water disinfection, wastewater treatment, and membrane-fouling mitigation.

Distinguished Professor and Wexler Chair in Information Technology Philip Yu, PhD, Department of Computer Science, received a $500,000 NSF grant to extend his current social network studies in data

mining across multiple partially aligned social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Assistant Professor Brian Ziebart, PhD, Department of Computer Science, and Assistant Professor Lev Reyzin, PhD, Department of Mathematics, Statistics & Computer Science, re-ceived a $500,000 NSF award to develop machine learning techniques to

produce better predictions in applications, including medical decision support, public policy, and epidemiology.

UIC engineering professors are conducting important research with the help of new grants as large as $2 million. Studies range from data-mining methods for social networks to thermal transport for next-generation nanoelectronics.

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Engineering Alumni AssociationNext meeting: Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Spring event: Date TBD

UIC Engineering Career FairTuesday, February 2, 2016 UIC Forum (725 West Roosevelt Road) Noon–4 p.m.

Current UIC students and alumni are invited to attend. No registration required.

Employers seeking talented engineering/computer science applicants can register online at http://go.uic.edu/careerfair.

Engineering WeekFebruary 21–27, 2016

27th Annual An Evening with Legacies and LeadersSunday, April 17, 2016

Engineering EXPO Friday, April 22, 2016 UIC Forum (725 West Roosevelt Road)

Upcoming Events

College of Engineering 851 South Morgan Street Chicago, Illinois 60607-7043