Illinois Innovators

Get to know Nancy Amato, the first woman to lead the Department of Computer Science at Illinois. In addition to some interesting personal background, she discusses her research in robotics, how the computer science field has become even more interdisciplinary, the success of the CS + X degree, and the upcoming Rising Stars Workshop, a gathering of top female CS PhD students.

On April 10, astronomers announced that they had captured the first images of a black hole through the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) – a planet scale array of eight ground based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration. University of Illinois Physics Professor Charles Gammie, is a member of the EHT Science Council and co-led a group which provided the theoretical analysis. The team developed sophisticated computer code to make running and analyzing the simulations as efficient as possible. Professor Gammie joins Illinois Innovators to discuss the significance of the discovery, the role the Illinois team played in the project, and what’s next.

The Illinois College of Engineering and what was then the Department of Military Science have similar beginnings, dating back to the 1870s. Those ties strengthened following the world wars. Today science and technology are intertwined with the United States military. Of note is that 55 Illinois engineering students are enrolled in the ROTC program at Illinois. On the latest Illinois Innovators, host Mike Koon talks about those ties with Joe Rank, a Vietnam Veteran, two-time University of Illinois graduate, a retired U.S. Navy Commander and former Naval Instructor for the Navy ROTC program at Illinois.

Continued advances in various fabrication processes and technologies have led to rapid developments in both top-down and bottom-up approaches to nanomanufacturing (nanoMFG). The nanomanufacturing (nanoMFG) node at Illinois presented its first two-day workshop on focusing on data-science enabled advances in nanomanufacturing and nanotechnology to explore future opportunities in nanomanufacturing. The Director of the Nanomanufacturing Node, Kimani Touissant joins the program. He is an associate Professor in the Departments of Mechanical Science and Engineering, and Bioengineering, and an Affiliate Faculty in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, as well as the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois

Gul Agha, professor of computer science and Director of the Open Systems Laboratory at the University of Illinois, joins the program. His widely cited work, "Actors: A Model of Concurrent Computing in Distributed Systems," provided a basis for a number of research projects in concurrent programming. Actor frameworks have been used to program Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook Chat, the British National Health Service Portal, and hundreds of commercial cloud applications. Together with Professor Bill Spencer, he co-directs the Illinois Structural Health Monitoring Group. The project pioneered research applying wireless sensor networks and distributed computing to continuously monitor the structural health of civil infrastructure such as bridges.

Lav Varshney, who leads the Information and Intelligence Group at the University of Illinois, talks about a number of topics related to artificial intelligence. Earlier this year, Professor Varshney led a session on Blockchain and the Scientific Method at the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences annual meeting in Washington. The chief scientist for Ensaras, Inc., he and the company began working with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago to develop a solution to odor complaints near their reservoir system. In 2017, Professor Varshney and his team of researchers received a $50,000 Siebel Energy Institutes seed grant to develop their project “Incentives, Choices and Analytics for Electric Vehicle Fleets in jointly managing Urban Traffic and Smart Grid.”

Quantum information science has been called the next technological “space race.” And the University of Illinois is positioning itself to be at the forefront of that race. In November, the U of I pledged $15 million for the formation of the Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center (or IQUIST). Two of the leading experts in the field, Illinois physics professors Brian DeMarco and Paul Kwiat join the show to discuss its vast future applications. Both professors represented the University of Illinois at the first ever Chicago Quantum Summit in November. DeMarco was invited to the Advancing American Leadership in Quantum Information Science Summit at the White House last fall.

A native of India, Sakshi Srivastava came to Illinois to study engineering, earning a bachelor of science degree in 2015 and a master of science in 2017. She has served as a research assistant under associate dean and ECE professor Jennifer Bernhard on investigating the role of antenna parameters in reducing interference. She has also worked as an intern at Microsoft. Most recently, she is featured in a chapter of a book co-authored by Illinois engineering’s Laura Hahn and Angie Wolters titled Women and Ideas in Engineering: Twelve stories from Illinois. The chapter is titled “Inspiring the Future Generation” and talks about her role in the creation a woman engineer statue on the Illinois campus.

MakerGirl, a non-profit founded at the University of Illinois in 2014, has a mission to inspire the next generations through educational STEM sessions led by college mentors and instructors. In less than four years, they have impacted 3,000 girls in 18 states. This year they are expanding to Northwestern University and have hired their first CEO in Stephanie Hein, who joins us to talk about the organization.

The University of Illinois hosted the 5th Health Care Engineering Systems Symposium, which brought experts to discuss simulation/virtual reality/augmented reality in health care and education, wearable computing, voice user interface, artificial intelligence in health care, medical and social robotics, and assistive living technologies. The program includes interviews with Darrin D’Agostino, Executive Dean, College of Osteopathic Medicine and Vice President for Health Affairs at Kansas City University; Citali Lopez Ortiz, professor of kinesiology and community health at Illinois; Stephen Boppart, Director of the Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory at Illinois' Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology; Scott Barrows, Director of Medical Visualization at Jump Simulation Peoria; Judy Rowen, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Carle Illinois College of Medicine, John Vozenilek, Vice President & Chief Medical Officer for the Jump Simulation Center Illinois; and Kesh Kesavadas, Director of the Healthcare Engineering Systems Center at Illinois.

Almost a year ago to the day of this recording, the University of Illinois announced the opening of the $15.6 million NSF-funded Illinois Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and Professor Nadya Mason as the center’s director. The goal of the center is to build highly interdisciplinary teams of researchers and students. One of the rock star physicists on the Illinois campus, she specializes in condensed matter physics.

In this episode, we talk alternative fuels with our guest Deepak Kumar, a research assistant professor in the department of agricultural and biological engineering with a focus on sustainable production of biofuels and biomaterials. He is a part of several projects, one of which is called PETROSS (Plants engineered to replace oil in sugcane and sweet sorgum). He is also leading a project developing fermentation technology for high solid use in the corn ethanol process.

If you live in a metropolitan area, then you are no doubt familiar with gridlock on the highways and roadways. An even greater percentage of those vehicles creating that gridlock are making deliveries, whether it be lunch from a favorite eatery, important B-to-B documents, or simply a package purchased through Amazon. What could delivery service look like in the future. University of Illinois Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering Naira Hovakiyman and her team has received an NSF proposal for a study titled Synergetic Drone Delivery Network in Metropolis.

Alison Dunn discusses her NSF Faculty Early Career award to study how hydrogels interact with biological tissues. Her work also has the potential to further develop general rules for designing hydrogels with specified surface requirements.The assistant professor of mechanical science and engineering at the University of Illinois specializes in "non-traditional" tribology. For more on the project visit https://bit.ly/2NySVHr.

When you think cybersecurity, you’re probably thinking about measures to keep hackers out of your network. Adam Bates, is focused on next steps after an attack begins. The assistant professor of computer science at the University of Illinois was granted a National Science Foundation CAREER AWARD to advance the use of data provenance, the goal of which is to identify the attacker, figure out their grand plan and prevent them achieving that plan. His work has attracted interest from VISA and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory.