Each year the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois internally recognizes a select group of faculty with with College Faculty Awards, honoring their achievements as innovators and their pioneering approaches to teaching and world-renowned research.
This year, Dean Bashir honored five Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty with College Awards at the 2025 Faculty Awards Ceremony on April 28 at the Campus Instructional Facility.
CEE AWARD RECIPIENTS
2025 College Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring
Imad Al-Qadi was selected to receive the College Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring. Established 2022, the Grainger College of Engineering has created this college-wide award to recognize engineering faculty members who have demonstrated a sustained excellence and innovation in graduate student mentoring.
Al-Qadi holds the Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering and is the Director of the Illinois Center for Transportation (ICT) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research and consulting focus on a range of transportation-related topics, including highway and airfield sustainability, rolling resistance, fuel consumption, resilience, pavement mechanics, advanced modeling, tire-pavement interaction, transportation modeling and testing, interface systems (including geosynthetics), asphalt mixes, pavement recycling optimization, ground-penetrating radar, infrastructure asset management, and autonomous vehicles. He also investigates energy harvesting, truck platoons, and the impact of electric trucks on infrastructure.
2025 Dean's Award for Early Innovation for Assistant Professor
Shelly Zhang was awarded the Dean's Award for Early Innovation for Assistant Professor. This award recognizes exceptional individuals who are working at the early stages of the innovation life cycle to turn their research into products that benefit the world. Candidates are selected from the pool of faculty who made invention disclosures to the Office of Technology Management during the previous academic year.
Zhang was selected last year for the 2024 Dean's Award for Excellence in Research, honoring faculty members annually for outstanding research in two categories: to assistant professors based on one (1) year of research accomplishments; and to associate professors based on five (5) years of research accomplishments.
Dr. Xiaojia Shelly Zhang is a David C. Crawford Faculty Scholar and Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also holds affiliate appointments at the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Dr. Zhang directs the MISSION (MuIti-functional Structures and Systems desIgn OptimizatioN) Laboratory. Her research group focuses on exploring multi-physics topology optimization, stochastic and machine learning algorithms, and additive manufacturing to develop multi-functional, sustainable, and innovative civil structures, robots, and metamaterials for applications at different scales, from as large as high-rise buildings to as small as material microstructures. Her research has been supported by NSF, DARPA, AFOSR, and ARO.
2025 Dean's Award for Excellence in Research for Assistant Professor
Nishant Garg was selected to receive the Dean's Award for Excellence in Research for Assistant Professor. The award honors faculty members annually for outstanding research in two categories: to assistant professors based on one (1) year of research accomplishments; and to associate professors based on five (5) years of research accomplishments.
Garg is an Assistant Professor in CEE, working on the chemistry and characterization of construction materials. He was previously a Lecturer and Postdoctoral Researcher at Princeton University where he applied X-ray and neutron scattering to characterize novel and sustainable cements. He obtained his Ph.D. in Nanoscience at Aarhus University, Denmark in 2015 where he used solid-state NMR to study cements and clay minerals. With his multi-disciplinary background in chemistry, materials science, and civil engineering he has spent his research career in developing a fundamental understanding of sustainable, durable, and environment-friendly cement-based materials.
2025 College Award for Excellence in Translational Research
Mani Golparvar-Fard has been recognized for Excellence in Translational Research, honoring faculty or staff researchers for special achievement in translational research. Examples of translational research include, but are not limited to: entrepreneurial activities related to research outcomes, technology transfer of research through licensing of intellectual property, and research leading directly to products/outcomes with notable societal impact.
A Professor of Civil Engineering, Computer Science, & Technology Entrepreneurship, Faculty Entrepreneurial Fellow, Excellence Faculty Fellow, Golparvar-Fard is also the director of the Real-time and Automated Monitoring and Control (RAAMAC) lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He received his Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering and MS degree in Computer Science from UIUC in 2010, MASc in Civil Engineering from the University of British Columbia in 2006, and MS and BS in Civil Engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology in 2005 and 2002 respectively.
Golparvar-Fard has worked with many national and international construction companies and most extensively with Turner Construction. He has several patents and is currently involved with Reconstruct Inc., an early-stage technology company with $28 million in venture capital funding that was founded based on the outcomes of his ongoing research projects>
2025 Collins Award for Innovative Teaching
Jeffery R. Roesler has been named recipient of the 2025 Collins Award for Innovative Teaching. W. Leighton Collins was a former faculty member (1929-1965) and former Executive Director of ASEE (1955-1971). He was a pioneer and leader of ASEE and through his subsequent consulting he has helped shape engineering instruction in the United States. The recipient of this award is to be selected for recognition based on outstanding development and/or use of new and innovative teaching methods.
On the faculty of CEE at Illinois since 2000, Roesler holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering from the Grainger Engineering at Illinois. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Illinois, Dr. Roesler was a Visiting Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of California at Berkeley. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in pavement and materials engineering, transportation engineering, geometric design of roadways, project-based intro to CEE, and CEE professional practice.
Roesler is an active participant in the Transportation Research Board (TRB), and past President of the International Society of Concrete Pavements (2020-2022). He is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of California.