Cai, Lopez-Pamies receive named professorships

8/23/2022

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Two members of the CEE at Illinois faculty have been awarded named appointments in recognition of their significant accomplishments and contributions to the department. 

Ximing Cai
Ximing Cai

Professor Ximing Cai has been named Ben Chie Yen Professor. Cai has been on the CEE faculty since 2003, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in water resources engineering, surface water hydrology and application of geographic information systems, and river basin management.

Cai’s recent research interests include integrated food-energy-water systems (INFEWS) analysis, coupled human-natural system analysis with an emphasis of human interferences in hydrological processes, and drought management. He previously held the the Colonel Harry F. and Frankie M. Lovell Endowed Professorship.

The Ben Chie Yen Professorship Fund was established in 2021 by Ruth Yen, the spouse of the late Ben Chie Yen (1935-2001), a hydrology professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Yen served on the CEE faculty from 1966-2001. He was an internationally recognized leader in hydraulics and hydrology. His major contributions were in open-channel hydraulics, urban drainage, watershed hydrology, and reliability and uncertainty analyses in hydro-engineering.

oscar lopez-pamies
Oscar Lopez-Pamies

Professor Oscar Lopez-Pamies has been named the Colonel Harry F. and Frankie M. Lovell Endowed Professor. He has been on the CEE faculty since 2011, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in methods of structural analysis, mechanics of solids, homogenization, composite materials and polymers, and numerical methods for partial differential equations.

Lopez-Pamies has research interests in the mechanics and physics of materials. He focuses on the development of mathematical theories and their numerical implementation to describe, explain, and predict the macroscopic behavior, stability, and failure of heterogeneous solids directly in terms of their microscopic behavior. 

The late Colonel Harry F. Lovell was born on May 20, 1910, in Fulton County, Illinois.  He earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering at the University of Illinois in 1932. A member of the Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University of Illinois, he served in the U.S. Army Reserve until World War II, when he was called to active duty and deployed to the Philippines and Japan.  After the war, he joined the Army Corps of Engineers.  Colonel Lovell retired in 1961, after 31 years in the Army. Through a series of significant gifts to the Colonel Harry F. Lovell and Frankie M. Lovell Endowment Fund, Colonel Lovell generously supported the University of Illinois Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. 


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This story was published August 23, 2022.