News

Two Illinois Faculty Selected for Frontiers of Engineering...
Two College of Engineering faculty members-- William P. King and Huimin Zhao have been selected to take part in the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) 15th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium. Engineers ages 30 to 45 who are performing exceptional engineering research and...

Engineering in the News July 2009
Below are excerpts from Illinois in the News, a daily service provided by the University of Illinois News Bureau . This collection of July excerpts focuses on engineering topics and faculty contacted for their expertise by print and broadcast reporters around the world. BIRDS "SEE" MAGNETIC...

Goldberg honored with Evolutionary Computation Pioneer Award
David E. Goldberg, the Jerry S. Dobrovolny Distinguished Professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering (IESE), will receive an Evolutionary Computation Pioneer Award for 2010 by the Computational Intelligence Society. The award recognizes significant contributions...

Novel Illinois Curriculum Incubator Receives HP Innovation...
$260,000 grant aims to improve student interest and achievement in engineering, computer science, and information technology The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was selected as one of 10 two- and four-year colleges and universities in the United States to receive a highly...

Toxic Molecule May Help Birds "See" North and South
Researchers at the University of Illinois report that a toxic molecule known to damage cells and cause disease may also play a pivotal role in bird migration. The molecule, superoxide, is proposed as a key player in the mysterious process that allows birds to “see” Earth’s magnetic...

ITI Wins Site Award Supporting Undergraduate Research
The National Science Foundation has announced a $357,000 award to create a "Research Experiences for Undergraduates" (REU) site in the Information Trust Institute (ITI) at Illinois. Undergraduate students, unlike graduate students, are often confined to classroom work and excluded from...

2009 ITI Undergraduate Summer Intern Program Underway
Twenty-one undergraduate students from around the world were selected to receive 2009 summer internships from the Information Trust Institute (ITI) at the University of Illinois, and the program is now underway. This year marks the third offering of the annual undergraduate research program,...

First acoustic metamaterial 'superlens' created by Illinois...
A team of researchers at the University of Illinois has created the world's first acoustic "superlens"--an innovation that could have practical implications for high-resolution ultrasound imaging, non-destructive structural testing of buildings and bridges, and novel underwater stealth...

Four faculty receive HP Innovation Awards
Four College of Engineering researchers-- Narendra Ahuja, Thomas S. Huang , and William H. Sanders , electrical and computer engineering (ECE) , and Jiawei Han, computer science --have been selected by Hewlitt Packard to receive awards as part of its second annual HP Labs Innovation Research...

Scientists break light modulation speed record--twice
Researchers have constructed a light-emitting transistor that has set a new record with a signal-processing modulation speed of 4.3 gigahertz, breaking the previous record of 1.7 gigahertz held by a light-emitting diode. But, the researchers didn't stop there. By internally connecting the base...

Whole lotta building going on...
This summer an intrepid team of graduate and undergraduate students is assembling in Urbana giant aluminum "wheels" that will hold the resistive plate counter (RPC) detector components for an upgraded trigger of the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Bookhaven...

U of I and French research institute partner on joint...
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and INRIA, the French national computer science institute, announced the formation of the Joint Laboratory for Petascale Computing. The Joint Laboratory will be based at Illinois and will include researchers from INRIA, Illinois' Center for...

Illini Pullers Win International Tractor Design Competition
The University of Illinois Illini Pullers are the winners of the 2009 ASABE International 1/4 Scale Tractor Student Design Competition. The Pullers are a student club associated with the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Illinois. "We've been feeling in the last few...

Illinois-led project garners $6.25 Million DoD grant
Both the electronic components of your cell phone and the explosive portions of military weaponry could be better protected by the smarter materials that U of I scientists plan to design. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded a $6.25 million grant for the University of Illinois-led...

Stelzer named UI Distinguished Teacher-Scholar
Timothy J. Stelzer, an associate research professor of physics, has been named a University Distinguished Teacher-Scholar by the Provost. The designation "Teacher-Scholar" is the University's highest award to recognize scholarly contributions and excellence in the areas of teaching and...

Trio of Big Ten towns leads to trifecta of inventions
How many people can say that they single handedly represent three different Big Ten schools? Well, graduate student Adam Steele, 26, can. He was born and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, did his undergraduate work at Penn State, and then decided that he would finish it all out studying aerospace...

Braatz and collaborators recognized by the Council for...
Richard Braatz , a Millennium Chair and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering --eight former students and postdocs, and collaborators at Merck & Co. were recognized with the 2009 Collaboration Success Award from the Council for Chemical Research (CCR) for contributions to process...

Illinois hosts 2009 GEM⁴ Summer School
Learning never stops at Illinois. Along with the start of the regular summer session, the University of Illinois is this year's host to the 2009 GEM 4 Summer School on Cellular and Molecular Mechanics on campus from June 8-19. Lectures and lab sessions will focus on enabling technologies in...

Engineering in the News June 2009
Below are excerpts from Illinois in the News, a daily service provided by the University of Illinois News Bureau . This collection of June excerpts focuses on engineering topics and faculty contacted for their expertise by print and broadcast reporters around the world. NCSA PROVIDING...

Aluminum-oxide nanopore beats other materials for DNA...
Fast and affordable genome sequencing has moved a step closer with a new solid-state nanopore sensor being developed by researchers at the University of Illinois. The nanopore sensor, made by drilling a tiny hole through a thin film of aluminum oxide, could ultimately prove capable of performing...

Petrov recognized for work in thin nitride layers
Ivan Petrov, director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory Central Facilities , has been recognized with an honorary degree-- Doctor Honoris Causa --by Linköping University, Sweden, "for seminal contributions to the science of synthesis and characterization of thin...

ITI, Hobbico, and Boeing demonstrate New Emergency Response...
A newly developed wireless multi-hop technology is set to dramatically improve the ability of emergency services personnel to obtain reliable, high-quality video footage from surveillance aircraft and combine it in real-time with other types of incoming data, thus providing them with a potentially...

Evidence of macroscopic quantum tunneling detected in...
A team of researchers at Illinois has demonstrated that, counter to classical Newtonian mechanics, an entire collection of superconducting electrons in an ultrathin superconducting wire is able to "tunnel" as a pack from a state with a higher electrical current to one with a notably lower current,...

Illini spirit shines in space!
Mission commander Scott Altman (BS 1981, Aerospace Engineering) proudly displayed his Illini colors aboard the shuttle Atlantis. After a successful mission, the shuttle touched down at the Edwards Air Force base on Sunday, May 24, after two days of bad weather prevented landing attempts at the...

Physics major trains to be "friction-free"
Many university students take the summer to relax after a long year of study. Some choose to go on vacation or just sit around the house. Others may try to find work or possibly an internship. One University of Illinois undergraduate, however, is looking to continue his training for a shot at the...

Alumnus' product is a Popular Science Invention Award winner
While still an undergraduate at Illinois, Michael Callahan was already developing his first product--a voice synthesizer that gives back the ability to speak to those with vocal cord or neurological damage. The Audeo, as it was named, has recently been named a 2009 Invention Award winner by ...

New Traffic Analysis Testbed Being Created at ITI
Information Trust Institute faculty members Negar Kiyavash and Todd P. Coleman have long been pursuing research at the cutting edge of information theory and statistical signal processing. Now the Air Force is providing its research team with equipment to build a testbed that it, and other ITI...

State Science Olympiad comes to campus
On Saturday, April 25, over 1,100 middle and high school students participated in the 24th Annual Illinois State Science Olympiad (ISO) competition held on the University of Illinois campus. Students from across state competed in scientific challenges that involved mathematics, engineering, and...

Wandelt plays key role in Planck mission
On May 14, both the Planck spacecraft and the Herschel Space Observatory will blast into space aboard the same Ariane 5 rocket from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana. The European Space Agency (ESA) leads both missions, with significant participation from NASA. Benjamin D. Wandelt, a...

College honors eight Distinguished Alumni
The College of Engineering recognized eight Distinguished Alumni at the annual Awards Convocation on May 1. The Alumni Award for Distinguished Service is given to alumni and former faculty members who have distinguished themselves by outstanding leadership in planning and direction of engineering...

UIUC active in six DoD MURI awards
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is well-represented among the nation's elite academic institutions receiving research awards as part of the Department of Defense (DoD) Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program. The MURI program supports research by teams of...

AE alumnus commands shuttle mission to Hubble
Veteran space flier and University of Illinois alumnus, Scott Altman (BS 1981, Aerospace Engineering) is mission commander for the current space shuttle mission. After a successful launch on Monday, May 11, the space shuttle, Atlantis, began its 11-day mission to service the Hubble Space...

Gregg earns ACC award for robotics work
Robert Gregg, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering (ECE), has been awarded the 2009 Hugo Schuck Award by the American Control Council (ACC) for his work on control methods for dynamic walking robots. Gregg won the best student paper for the same research at last year’s...

ASME Selects King for Heat Transfer Award
William P. King, an associate professor and Kritzer Faculty Scholar in mechanical science and engineering , was selected to receive the 2009 Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The award honors engineers under the age of...

See the Force: Mechanical stress leads to self-sensing in...
Parachute cords, climbing ropes, and smart coatings for bridges that change color when overstressed are several possible uses for force-sensitive polymers being developed by researchers at the University of Illinois. The polymers contain mechanically active molecules called mechanophores. When...

Illinois researchers win chip design award
Assistant professor Yun Chiu and Wenbo Liu, a PhD student in electrical and computer engineering (ECE), recently presented a parallel analog-to-digital converter (ADC) array chip at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) that won them the 46th DAC/ISSCC Student Design Contest...

Harvey Jordan Award Acceptance Speech -- 2009 Awards...
The Harvey Jordan Award is given annually to the top graduating senior in the College of Engineering--the equivalent to a valedictorian for the senior class. This year's speech by Luke Edelman was very well received, and is being posted upon request of several individuals who attended the event ...

Physics professor earns USAF Young Investigator Research...
Benjamin Lev, an assistant professor of physics, has been awarded a grant through the U.S. Air Force's Young Investigator Research Program to explore quantum liquid crystals using ultracold dipolar atoms. The Air Force Office of Scientific Research announced Oct. 17 it will award...