UIC College of Engineering

UIC’s Engineering Design Team (EDT) brought the heat to this year’s Engineering Open House at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with a strong showing by all three robots entered into the contest by their teams. In the objectives competition, EDT’s ground robot Stella placed second out of 32 teams, and team Air’s drone made it to the semi-final round. Team DevastatingWin lasted three rounds in the combat robot tournament. The two robot contests take place simultaneously at the Engineering Open House—one is skills-based, the other a robot brawl. The Midwestern Robotics Design Competition (MRDC) was started in 1987 and is one of the oldest continuously-run robotics competitions in the country. This annual two-day contest is completely student-run. It involves multi-level…

Some senior design projects don’t go beyond Expo. However, a group of students from the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering are working with Fermi National Laboratory on a project that will go much further. In fact, it’s slated to be launched into space. Team 29, which is made up of Alexander Bulger, David Laczak, Eloise de Castelnau, Jose Luis Salinas, and Christopher James, is working with Fermilab, a laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics, to develop a thermal vacuum chamber testing station for the CubeSat (small satellite) program. “The team has been tasked with retrofitting a pre-existing vacuum chamber, and implementing a heating/cooling system that is automated and can cycle through the target temperatures of -100°C to 100°C,” Bulger explained. “Utilizing the engineering design…

In many instances, Chicago’s aging infrastructure is a problem. For five creative seniors in the Department of Civil and Materials Engineering, it’s an opportunity. The team of Griffin Fuller, Alyssa Solomon, Jack Timmins, Pengcheng Wang, and Qin Wang are reimaging El Paseo, Spanish for “The Trail,” which is an urban greenway slated for construction in the Little Village and Pilsen neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side. An urban greenway is a bike and walking trail that is featured in the city sphere while being surrounded by the natural environment, or green vegetation and flora. “Our inspiration came from observing the engineering marvel of other makeshift thoroughfares such as the Bloomingdale Trail on [Chicago’s] North Side and the High Line in New…

The UIC Engineering Experience Camp has expanded! Due to growing demand, the College of Engineering summer camp will immerse students in activities designed by multiple engineering departments: bioengineering, civil and materials engineering, mechanical and industrial engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and computer science. “Engineering isn’t a subject grade-school students encounter every day, so the camp provides an inspiring look at the ways engineers change the world,” said the camp’s director, Clinical Associate Professor Yeow Siow of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. “We’re offering them a week of hands-on activities and challenges that will introduce them to the creative aspects of engineering while also getting a sense of what life will be like as a college student.” UIC’s College…

University of Illinois at Chicago students, faculty, and staff have the chance to influence the look and feel of the new Engineering Innovation Building by giving their thoughts on the public art that will greet visitors as they enter. The UIC Fine Arts Review Committee has selected three designs from highly regarded artists across the country and is asking members of the UIC community to express which is their favorite: “Conduit” by Rachel Beach of New York, “Nano Vanitas” by Todd Slaughter of Ohio, or “Entropy” by local Chicago artist Christine Tarkowski. The committee received 70 applications based on a public call for artists. The finalists’ charge: propose an abstract suspended sculpture that will hang in either the atrium of…

I am a computer scientist whose interests are Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Human Computer Interaction, as applied to educational technology, assistive robotics, intelligent interfaces and health care.