Associate Professor Jie (Jane) Lin was recently featured in Wallethub’s recent article 2017’s Best & Worst Cities to Drive in. Lin was asked a series of question in the Ask the Experts section that focuses on cost, safety and environmental impact.  She also provided her expertise as she answered questions about autonomous vehicles and their potential consequences for society.The full article can be found at Wallethub. 

Donor, volunteer, mentor, advisor, instructor, and friend Christopher Burke has for more than a decade shared his time, resources, and business acumen with UIC’s College of Engineering. Recently, the College celebrated the investiture of Farhad Ansari, PhD, as the inaugural recipient of The Christopher B. and Susan S. Burke Professorship, the first endowed professorship in the UIC Department of Civil and Materials Engineering.Dr. Ansari (PhD ’83), UIC Distinguished Professor, currently serves as Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and as a faculty member in the Department of Civil and Materials Engineering. Acknowledged as the pioneer in applying optical fiber sensors for structural health monitoring, he has consulted on and designed structural monitoring systems for bridges around the world, including New York’s…

CME students have been winning scholarships throughout the school year and the accolades continue to flood the department.Lisha Wu was awarded the Chancellor’s Graduate Research Award for her research on the Removal of Chromium from water using Sustainable Manganese Oxide Based Sorbents and received a $5,000 prize. She is working under the direction of Associate Professor Amid Khodadoust in the Environmental Separations Lab.Since its inception in 2009, the Chancellor’s Graduate Research Award has supported multidisciplinary scholarship in an attempt to expose graduate students to varied research and creative fields. The award mechanism has naturally evolved into a way for students early in their studies to develop new research directions for their PhD dissertations or terminal degree thesis/capstone project and has…

A team of CME students won second place overall at the 28th Annual UIC Engineering Senior Design Expo on April 21, 2017 at the UIC Forum, 725 W. Roosevelt Road, Chicago.The team of Mike Anzalone, Mary Cunningham, Yousef Dana, Garret Golden and Stephen Lashock won the Silver Award, which had a prize of $2,000, with their project Grant Park Reef Trail, which used virtual reality during their presentation.The group also won a Globe Award in the Infrastructure Improvement category. The expo was made up of 130 projects, which were presented by more than 500 students competing in five categories.The goal of the Grant Park Reef Trail project is to renovate Monroe Harbor to become a positive addition to the existing…

UIC’s student chapter of ASCE bounced back to the top of the rankings at the recent the Great Lakes Student Conference in Wisconsin. After a rough 2016 performance, UIC placed fourth overall – out of 19 school – during the conference on March 30 to April 1 at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) members competed against 18 universities during the annual conference, which is made up of schools from northern and central Illinois, southern Wisconsin, and Indiana, and it is one of the largest regions based on number of schools.The schools competed in a set of eight Civil Engineering-based competitions. The UIC team won two the eight competitions and made significant advances in the…

Sean Vitousek, a research assistant professor in CME, led a recent study showing the potential decimation of Southern California’s beaches by the year 2100 that has been making waves in the press.Vitousek and a team of scientists developed computer model called “CoSMoS-COAST” (Coastal Storm Modeling System – Coastal One-line Assimilated Simulation Tool) to predict that with limited human intervention, 31 percent to 67 percent of beaches may become completely eroded (up to existing coastal infrastructure or sea-cliffs) under scenarios of sea-level rise of one to two meters.“Beaches are perhaps the most iconic feature of California, and the potential for losing this identity is real,” said Vitousek, who is the director of the Environmental Fluid Mechanics group at UIC. “The effect of California losing…