Illinois Innovators

Kyle Chandler, the founder and CEO of Chief Technologies, a Pennsylvania based manufacturer and engineering firm of specialized hazard control systems, discusses engineering behind modern fire equipment. Chief Technologies builds a variety of fluids handling (large pumping and fire retardant proportioning systems) and delivery devices (systems used to target and flow water streams on fires), primarily used in large-scale petrochemical facilities.

One of today’s major concerns is the deterioration of bridges. Most recently a pedestrian bridge under construction on the campus of Florida International University collapsed killing six people. Neil Hawkins is an expert in reinforced and prestressed concrete and prestressed concrete structures subject to static and dynamic loadings. He is past Director of the American Concrete Institute, the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and the Post-Tensioning Institute.

The United States has set an ambitious goal of sending a manned mission to Mars during the first half of this century. This will likely mean several more trips to the moon, something we haven’t done in nearly 50 years. Combine that with other potential space missions, and logistics will be a big issue. Koki Ho, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his team have been exploring how these missions can be completed efficiently.

It is estimated that about 30 percent of consumable food products are wasted, but that number is much higher in the United States. Conversely about 13 percent of Americans are food insecure. Kathleen Hu, a senior in Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois, is providing a solution through a startup called Dibbs, a technology platform and organization to connect excess food at grocery stores to local food pantries. They’re on a mission to reduce food waste while fighting hunger. For her efforts, Kathleen claimed the $20,000 Illinois Innovation prize, while Dibbs was a finalist on the Cozad New Venture Competition.

The show tackles the topic of how data analytics has an ever-growing presence in the future of healthcare. The guest is George Heintz, the senior program manager for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Healthcare Engineering System Center’s Health Data Analytics initiative. He serves as a liaison between HCESC and healthcare providers, the health care industry and other healthcare researchers.

Revolutions in big data analysis are shaping healthcare delivery worldwide—technologies that can analyze, classify, and manage patient data and outcomes. To foster collaboration and to shape the future of Medical Informatics and Health Data Analytics, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—in collaboration with healthcare providers, industry representatives, and academic researchers held a one-day summit. We caught up with several of the presenters after their talks to get their take on where the field is heading. Those interviewed include Michael Sutter, Chief Innovation Officer and Enterprise Clinical Solutions Architect at Carle Foundation Hospital; Justin Starren, Chief of the Division of Health and Biomedical Informatics at Northwestern University; Khan Siddiqui, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer with Higi; Rich Caruana, Principal Researcher at Microsoft; David Liebovitz, Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Chicago; and Jay Duhig, Director of Patient Integration at AbbVie.

Tarek Abdelzaher, a professor of computer science with an emphasis on cyberphysical systems at the University of Illinois, leads a group of researchers studying how information spreads through social media and the effects that information has on people’s beliefs as it moves. The project began as part a $4 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant.

Klara Nahrstedt, a professor of computer science and director of the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois, discusses her involvement in several National Science Foundation and Department of Energy cyber infrastructure projects. Those include building advanced real-time security in cyber-physical systems (smart grid and electric vehicles) and secure sensor networks monitoring of oil and gas cyber-physical infrastructure. She also touches on quality of service management in multimedia networks and its implications on Net Neutrality.

Laura Hahn, the Director of the Academy for Excellence in Engineering Education (or AE3), joins Illinois Innovators to talk about AE3 initiatives like the Strategic Instructional Innovations Program (SIIP) and the Illinois Engineering First Year Experience, which guides freshmen to people and resources they will need in their College experience. She also talks about the book, Women and Ideas in Engineering: Twelve Stories from Illinois, in which Laura is the co-author. The book, which highlights women of influence within the College of Engineering, will be published soon.

The startup Lumos has developed a safe renewable system, which not only stores and cools nuclear waste, but uses it for electricity. Its CEO, Aries Loumis, a graduate of Illinois' Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering program, stops by to not only talk about their technology, but advocate for the future of nuclear as a continued energy source.

While much of the rhetoric around climate change centers on extreme events such as floods or droughts, today’s guest Praveen Kumar, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Illinois, contends frequency and intensity of non-extreme or everyday precipitation events are changing and having a noticeable effect on the ecosystem.

Continuing the series on "Why Cancer Research Needs Engineering," Kesh Kesavadas, Director of the Health Care Engineering Systems Center and professor of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign discusses robotic surgery and its impact on treating cancer patients.

What will the doctor's office of the future look like? In our continuing series on Why Cancer Research Needs Engineering, Stephen Boppart, Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering and Director of Imaging at Illinois, foresees more engineering and technology integrated into the doctor-patient relationship.

This year alone in this country 600,000 people will die from the disease and 1.6 million will be newly diagnosed. In the fight to win, a new generation of researchers will use engineering to advance prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Rohit Bhargava, a pioneer in the field of digital molecular biology, a professor in bionengineering at the University of Illinois and a founding director of the Cancer Center of Illinois joins the program.

Creating a vaccine typically takes a lot of trial and error and testing. However, with machine learning and data-driven modeling, physicians can have a leg up in targeting specific vaccines. Since 2010, Andrew Ferguson, now an assistant professor of materials, science, and engineering at the University of Illinois, has applied statistical mechanical tools to develop data-driven models of HIV viral fitness landscapes for computational vaccine design. This is another way that technology is making health care more personalized.