Students show they are ready for the working world at the annual Engineering Expo

In April, 21 teams from civil, materials, and environmental engineering presented their final projects during UIC’s 2026 Engineering Expo.

The event is the culmination of two semesters of hard work in the Senior Design course, which challenged teams of undergraduate students to solve real-world engineering problems through research, creativity, and the skills they have developed at UIC.

The projects were related to environmental, structural, transportation, and water resources engineering, helping prepare students for the working world or the next step in their academic journey.

Increasing parking and saving wetlands
The team of Abdelhafeez Abdelhafeez, Sahaj Bhatt, Ezazul Haque, Zain Nabeel, and Daniel Salem presented the “Sawmill Sports Hub Parking Lot Expansion,” which tasked them with increasing parking at the sports facility.

What may have seemed like a straightforward project challenged the students to address civil and environmental engineering problems.

“One of the biggest challenges of the project is that we have a lot of wetlands around the area, which are regulated and protected,” student Sahaj Bhatt said. “We actually cut into some of the buffer around the wetlands, and we had to do remediation. This is where we take native plants and add them back in to equalize what we took out.”

In the end, the students delivered a parking lot design that added 100 spaces to support peak customer volume better. They also suggested paving with permeable materials to reduce flooding risk and improve drainage.

Safer roads
The team of Bianca Delos Reyes, Adelyse Gonzales, Quinton George, Earnest “Josh” Soriano, and Galilea Ferrer researched “Oakton Street Modifications,” which challenged the team to evaluate the street’s existing conditions using traffic data, crash analysis, and level-of-service assessments.

“We took a four-lane roadway and reduced it to one lane and added parking and bike lanes to improve the safety and accessibility for all users,” Reyes said. “There have been approximately 370 accidents, and with this plan, they would see a significant decrease.”

Throughout the project, the students enhanced their collaborative capabilities as a team while honing the skillsets they learned in the classroom.

“UIC did a wonderful job preparing us for this project,” Gonzales said. “The programs we used for this project are the same programs we used in some classes.”

Superstructural challenges

The team of Lisa Patel, Kelly Imburgia, Samantha Pantoja, Christopher Padilla, and Elijah Corbin presented “Maintaining Mobility: Superstructure Reconstruction of Laramie Avenue Bridge.”

The team developed plans and a new design to replace the Larmie Street bridge, which crosses I-290 and the CTA Blue Line.

“The bridge is basically gone,” Imburgia said. “There are holes on the top of the bridge. We have the section where the sidewalk connects to the top of the bridge, and a slab of wood is visible, indicating that the concrete has so much deterioration that it is decaying. That also tells us that the materials inside the bridge are not performing to the standards.”

For this project, the team had to use many engineering principles to develop solutions to the problems they encountered and to make the bridge safe again.

“Structural goes into it. Construction goes into it. A lot of transportation, too, because you have to know which lanes need to be closed. I would say a lot of different disciplines are going into this as well,” she said.

While the project reinforced the students’ skills, they were confident that UIC prepared them for the working world.

“I think UIC prepared me well with communication skills, networking opportunities, participating in clubs that get you out there and teach you to advocate for yourself in the field,” said Imburgia, who will be starting a job with Gannett Fleming Trans Systems after graduation.