Information Technology

Albert J. Valocchi

Albert J.
Valocchi

Professor and Associate Head

"Our graduate students will address society's challenges—problems we can't even imagine today."

1110 Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory

205 N. Mathews Ave. Urbana, IL 61801

valocchi@illinois.edu
Phone: 
(217) 333-3176
Fax: 
(217) 333-0687
Research Website

Albert J. Valocchi received his B.S. in Environmental Systems Engineering from Cornell University in 1975 and did his graduate studies at Stanford University in the Department of Civil Engineering, receiving his M.S. in 1976 and Ph.D. in 1981. He has been on the faculty of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois since 1981, and currently holds the rank of Professor.

Dr. Valocchi teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in water resources engineering, groundwater hydrology and contaminant transport, groundwater modeling and numerical methods, and stochastic analysis of porous media transport.

Dr. Valocchi is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Geophysical Union, the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the American Society for Engineering Education, and Sigma Xi. He serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, the Journal of Hydrologic Engineering (ASCE), Advances in Water Resources, and the Vadose Zone Journal. He has also served as a member of the National Research Council Committee on Environmental Remediation at Naval Facilities.

Dr. Valocchi has received several awards in recognition of his research and teaching accomplishments. He was a Shell Faculty Career Fellow from 1984 to 1987, and he has been awarded fellowships to lecture and conduct research from NATO and the Danish Research Academy. In 2002 he received the Collins Award for Innovative Teaching from the University of Illinois College of Engineering.

Research Overview: 

Dr. Valocchi’s research focuses upon mathematical modeling of pollutant fate and transport in porous media, with applications to groundwater contamination and remediation. He specializes in the development and application of models that couple physical, geochemical, and microbiological processes over a wide range of spatial scales ranging from the pore scale (micrometers) to the field scale (kilometers).

Links of Interest: 

Glaucio H. Paulino

Glaucio H.
Paulino

Professor
Donald Biggar Willet Professor in Engineering

"Through research our students can engineer a better world."

2209 Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory

205 N. Mathews Ave. Urbana, IL 61801

paulino@illinois.edu
Phone: 
(217) 333-3817
Fax: 
(217) 265-8041
Research Website

Glaucio H. Paulino holds a B.S. (Universidade de Brasilia 1985), M.S. (PUC-Rio, Brazil, 1988), and Ph.D. (Cornell University 1995), all in civil engineering, in addition to an M.S. degree in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University (1993). Prior to joining the University of Illinois in 1999, he served as a faculty member at the University of California at Davis. Currently he is the Burton and Erma Lewis Faculty Scholar of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He is also affiliated with the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (TAM), the Computational Science and Engineering Program, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

Dr. Paulino has taught graduate and undergraduate classes in mechanics of materials (laboratory and theory), fracture mechanics, plates and shells, continuum mechanics, tensor analysis, methods of structural analysis, finite element method, and boundary element method. His teaching honors include his appointment as a Collins Scholar (2001) and Collins Fellow (2002) by the College of Engineering, Academy for Excellence in Engineering Education.

Dr. Paulino is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE), the American Academy of Mechanics (AAM), the International Association for Boundary Element Methods (IABEM), and the International Society for Boundary Element Methods (ISBE). He is a member of Executive Committee of the IABEM, the Computational Mechanics committee of the ASCE Engineering Mechanics Division, the Committee on Computational and Applied Mechanics (CONCAM) of ASME, and the International Advisory Committee on Functionally Graded Materials (IACFGM). Moreover, he is on the editorial board of some international journals.

Dr. Paulino has given many invited lectures at international conferences, universities, research laboratories, and engineering companies. He was awarded the 2003 Xerox Award for Faculty Research. He is presently a faculty fellow at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Research Overview: 

Dr. Paulino has research interests in structural analysis, computational mechanics (finite elements, boundary elements, and meshless methods), functionally graded materials (FGMs), experimental methods, constitutive modeling of engineering materials, multiscale phenomena, high-order continuum, fracture and damage mechanics (deterministic and probabilistic), structural dynamics, solution adaptive techniques, inverse problems in mechanics (identification and reconstruction), sensitivity analysis and optimization (applied to both structures and continua), and topology design of structures.

Links of Interest: 

Yanfeng Ouyang

Yanfeng
Ouyang
Assistant Professor
Paul F. Kent Endowed Faculty Scholar

"Our research helps improve stability, efficiency, and resiliency of complex transportation systems."

1209 Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory

205 N. Mathews Ave. Urbana, IL 61801

yfouyang@illinois.edu
Phone: 
(217) 333-9858
Fax: 
(217) 333-1924
Research Website

Yanfeng Ouyang holds a B.Eng. in civil engineering (with top honors, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 2000), M.S. in civil engineering (University of Washington, 2001), M.S. in industrial engineering and operations research (University of California at Berkeley, 2005), and Ph.D. in civil engineering (University of California at Berkeley, 2005). He has been on the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since August 2005.

He currently teaches an undergraduate course in transportation engineering and a graduate course on logistics systems.

Professor Ouyang currently serves on the editorial advisory board of Transportation Research Part B, the ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems, and is a member of the Transportation Research Board's Network Modeling Committee (ADB30).  He is also an active member of the Institute of Operations Research and Management Science, and an affiliated member of the American Society of Civil Engineering. Professor Ouyang received the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation in April 2008 and the Gordon F. Newell Award from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2005.

Research Overview: 

Professor Ouyang's research mainly focuses on stability and efficiency of transportation systems; topics include transportation and supply network operations, logistics systems design, traffic flow theory, infrastructure management, and transportation safety.

Links of Interest: 

Barbara S. Minsker

Barbara S.
Minsker

Professor
Nauman Faculty Scholar

"The systems perspective is critical to solving today's complex environmental and water resources engineering problems."

3230d Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory

205 N. Mathews Ave. Urbana, IL 61801

minsker@illinois.edu
Phone: 
(217) 265-5293
Fax: 
(217) 333-6968
Research Website

Barbara S. Minsker holds a B.S. (Cornell University 1986) in operations research and industrial engineering, and Ph.D. (Cornell University 1995) in environmental systems engineering. From 1986 to 1990, she worked as an environmental policy analyst at ICF Incorporated and Wade Miller Associates in Washington, D.C. From 1995 to 1996, Dr. Minsker was a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Vermont's Research Center for Groundwater Remediation Design. She has been on the faculty at the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering since 1996 and is a Faculty Affiliate at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Dr. Minsker has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in civil and environmental systems analysis, including introductory systems analysis for civil and environmental engineers, environmental systems analysis, environmental risk assessment and management, uncertainty in environmental and water resources decision making, and optimization methods for engineering design.

Dr. Minsker is a member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the ASCE Environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI), the Association of Ground Water Scientists and Engineers, and the American Society for Engineering Education. She chairs the ASCE/EWRI Task Committee on Long-Term Groundwater Monitoring and is a member of the ASCE/EWRI Groundwater Management Committee, Environmental and Water Resource Systems Committee, and Evolutionary Computation Task Committee. She serves as associate editor for Water Resources Research and is a member of the AGU Groundwater Committee.

Dr. Minsker received the National Science Foundation Early Faculty Career (CAREER) Award in 1998 and the Army Young Investigator Award and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2000. In 2001, she was named a Center for Advanced Study Fellow. She has been an Arthur and Virginia Nauman Faculty Scholar since 2001.

Research Overview: 

Dr. Minsker has research interests in environmental systems analysis, investigating improved methods for modeling complex environmental systems so that informed management-level decisions can be made under conditions of uncertainty. Using machine learning approaches such as genetic algorithms, decision trees, support vector machines, and artificial neural networks, innovative and cost-effective solutions to complex environmental problems are being investigated. Recent applications include long-term groundwater monitoring and remediation design.

Links of Interest: 

Praveen Kumar

Praveen
Kumar

Professor

"Our students will be the leaders in innovating sustainable solutions to society’s most significant challenges"

2527B Hydrosystems Laboratory

301 N. Mathews Ave., Urbana, IL 61801

kumar1@illinois.edu
Phone: 
(217) 333-4688
Fax: 
(217) 333-0687

Praveen Kumar holds a B.Tech. (Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India 1987), M.S. (Iowa State University 1989), and Ph.D. (University of Minnesota 1993), all in civil engineering. He has been on the faculty of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois since 1995. Prior to joining University of Illinois, he was a research scientist (January 1993 to July 1995) at the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and Hydrologic Sciences Branch, NASA- Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA.

Dr. Kumar has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in hydrosystems engineering, engineering modeling under uncertainty, surface water hydrology, hydroclimatology, stochastic hydrology, non-linear methods in hydrology, and hydroinformatics.

In 1993 Dr. Kumar received the Universities Space Research Association Award for Promise and Potential of a Young Scientist. In 1996 he received the NASA New Young Investigator Award. He was selected as the NCSA/UIUC Faculty Fellow for 2001-2002. In 2005 he received the Xerox Award for Faculty Research. He has also been recognized for teaching excellence by having been listed several times in the UIUC List of Teachers Rated as Excellent by their Students.

Dr. Kumar is currently the Editor-in-Chief for Water Resources Research, the major scientific journal in the field, published by American Geophysical Union (AGU).  Prior to this he was the Editor for Geophysical Research Letters (2007-2009) also published by AGU. In the past he has served as the Associate Editor (1998-2001) for Water Resources Research and for ASCE Journal of Hydrologic Engineering (2003-2004). He is a member of Precipitation Committee, and Remote Sensing Committee of the Hydrology Section of the American Geophysical Union and served as the Chair of Precipitation Committee during 1999-2001. He served for five years as a member of the Board of Directors for CUHASI,Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science which has 120 member universities. 

Research Overview: 

Dr. Kumar's research includes study of complexity in hydrologic processes including hydroclimatology, ecohydrology, geomorphology, and hydroinformatics. The overall goal of Dr. Kumar’s research is to improve our understanding of hydrologic processes over a range of space and time scales with particular emphasis on understanding and modeling multiple scale non-linear interactions among sub-processes.

Links of Interest: 

Youssef Hashash

Youssef
Hashash

Professor
John Burkitt Webb Endowed Faculty Scholar

"A key ingredient of our research and education is the strong linkage between theory and practice."

2230c Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory

205 N. Mathews Ave. Urbana, IL 61801

hashash@illinois.edu
Phone: 
(217) 333-6986
Fax: 
(217) 333-9464
Research Website

Youssef Hashash holds a B.S. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1987), M.S. (MIT, 1988), and Ph.D. (MIT, 1992), all in civil engineering. He has been on the faculty of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois since 1998. Dr. Hashash worked as a Staff Engineer for the PB/MK TEAM in Dallas, Texas on the Superconducting Super Collider Project construction. In 1994 he joined the Geotechnical and Underground Engineering group at Parsons Brickerhoff in San Francisco, California, and was involved in many tunnel and deep excavation projects around the US and Canada.

Dr. Hashash has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in geotechnical engineering, numerical modeling in geomechanics and geotechnical earthquake engineering.

Dr. Hashash is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, the American underground Association and the International Tunneling Association. He also serves on Earth Retaining Structures Committee of the Geo-Institute of ASCE, and Performance of Structures during construction of SEI.

In 2002 Dr. Hashash was named a Beckman Fellow at the Center fo Advanced Studies at the University of Illinois. He is a 2001-2003 American Bridge Faculty scholar (UIUC). In 2000 Dr. Hashash was the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) and the Arthur Casagrande Professional Development Award from the Geo-Institute of ASCE. In 1999 he was a Notional Center for Supercomputing Application Fellow (UIUC). He received the James Crose Medal (ASCE, 1994) and Thomas Middlebrooks Awards (ASCE, 1997) for journal publications.

Research Overview: 

Dr. Hashash research interests include Deep Excavations, Earthquake Engineering, Numerical Modeling, and Soil-Structure Interaction. He is also involved in use of visualization and virtual reality techniques in geotechnical engineering applications.

Links of Interest: 

Khaled El-Rayes

Khaled
El-Rayes

Associate Professor

"Our programs offer unique educational experiences that prepare our students to assume top leadership positions in industry and academia."

3112 Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory

205 N. Mathews Ave. Urbana, IL 61801

elrayes@illinois.edu
Phone: 
(217) 265-0557
Fax: 
(217) 265-8039
Research Website

Khaled El-Rayes holds a B.Sc. (Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt 1987), M.Eng. (Concordia University, Montreal, Canada 1993) and a Ph.D. (Concordia University 1998), all in civil engineering. He has been on the faculty of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 2000. He has over 20 years of professional experience in both academia and the construction industry. Prior to joining the University of Illinois, he served on the faculty of the departments of Civil Engineering at Concordia University and the University of Newfoundland in Canada.

Dr. El-Rayes has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in the area of construction engineering and management including: construction planning and control, construction optimization and decision making, project management, project planning and control, construction equipment planning and methods, construction processes, engineering economics and management principles, building engineering systems, building economics, engineering design and technical engineering drawing. In recognition of his teaching effectiveness, Dr. El-Rayes has been repeatedly named to the “Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students” at UIUC.

Dr. El-Rayes is an assistant specialty editor in the area of information technology for the ASCE Journal of Construction Engineering and Management. He also served as the Chair of the ASCE Construction Research Council, which is widely recognized as the premier national forum for Construction Engineering and Management research and it includes in its membership more than 150 professors and scholars.

The research contributions of Dr. El-Rayes have been recognized nationally and internationally, receiving several research awards including the ASCE Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize in 2007, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2003, the Faculty of Engineering Doctoral Prize from Concordia University in 1998, and the Project Management Institute Excellence Award in 1993.

Research Overview: 

Dr. El-Rayes has research interests in construction optimization, decision support systems, information technologies, highway construction, and construction productivity. He has over 70 publications in these areas including more than 30 journal papers.

Links of Interest: 

Robert H. Dodds Jr.

Robert H.
Dodds Jr.
Professor
M.T. Geoffrey Yeh Chair in Civil Engineering
Member, National Academy of Engineering

 

"Large-scale simulations linked with creative experiments provide the most unique insights into the failure processes in structural metals."

1114a Newmark Civil Engineering Laboratory

205 N. Mathews Ave. Urbana, IL 61801

rdodds@illinois.edu
Phone: 
(217) 333-3276
Fax: 
(217) 333-9464
Research Website

Robert H. Dodds Jr. holds a B.S. (University of Memphis 1973), M.S. (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1975) and the Ph.D. (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1978), all in civil engineering. He served on the faculty at the University of Kansas from 1979-1987 before returning to Illinois in 1987. He was the Nathan M. Newmark Professor of Civil Engineering from 1996–2000 and in 2000 became the inaugural holder of the M.T. Geoffrey Yeh Chair in Civil Engineering.

Dr. Dodds teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on structural analysis, finite element methods, fatigue and fracture mechanics and software development-design methods for civil engineering.

In 1996, Dr. Dodds became Co-Editor of Engineering Fracture Mechanics, a leading international journal on fracture mechanics for the past 30 years. He is an Associate Editor for the International Journal for Engineering with Computers and the international journal Engineering Computations. He is a Contributing Editor to the International Journal for Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures. Professor Dodds previously served as an Associate Editor for ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering.

He has won several research awards, most notably the American Society of Civil Engineers Walter L. Huber Research Prize (1992), and the Nathan M. Newmark Medal (2001), the George R. Irwin Medal from ASTM (2000) and the 2001 Award of Merit with Fellow status from ASTM. He won the 2000 Munro Prize for the best paper published in the International Journal of Engineering Structures (with his Ph.D. student Carlos Matos).

Dr. Dodds was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2008.

Research Overview: 

Dr. Dodds' research interests focus on the field of nonlinear fracture mechanics fatigue and associated computational methods. Results of his research have wide ranging applications in civil engineering, offshore, petro-chemical, naval and aerospace structures. Professor Dodds has published extensively in the areas of fracture mechanics, computational methods, and software engineering.

Links of Interest: 

Ximing Cai

Ximing
Cai

Assistant Professor

"Water management problems are complex; they require interdisciplinary approaches."

2535c Hydrosystems Laboratory

301 N. Mathews Ave., Urbana, IL 61801

xmcai@illinois.edu
Phone: 
(217) 333-4935
Fax: 
(217) 333-0687

Ximing Cai received his B.S. in Water Resources Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, in 1990, M.S. in Hydrology and Water Resources at Tsinghua University in 1994, and Ph.D. in Environmental and Water Resources Engineering in 1999. Before he joined the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois, he worked with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington DC as a Postdoctoral Fellow (1999-2002); and as a joint Research Fellow at IFPRI and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Colombo, Sri Lanka (2002-2003).

Dr. Cai teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in water resources engineering, surface water hydrology and application of geographic information systems, and river basin management.

Dr. Cai is a registered professional engineer (Maryland since 2002). He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, American Geographic Union, and International Water Resources Association.

Research Overview: 

Dr. Cai’s research interests include large-scale system optimization, river basin planning and management, drought management, water resources economics and policy, geographic information system and spatial statistics, and international water resources development.

Links of Interest: 
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