1/28/2021
Mani Golparvar-Fard and Vishal Verma have received appointments with the Center for Advanced Study (CAS) for the 2021-22 academic year.
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CEE at Illinois Associate Professor Mani Golparvar-Fard and Assistant Professor Vishal Verma have received appointments with the Center for Advanced Study (CAS) for the 2021-22 academic year. Research appointments are awarded, on a competitive basis, to outstanding junior and senior faculty members pursuing path-breaking research.
As a tenured faculty member, Golparvar-Fard has been named Associate in the Center. Golparvar-Fard’s project focuses on preliminary research and planning activities to establish an institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Construction. The aim of the institute is to create the foundational ideas, technologies and technical workforce that allow AI research to support safe and productive construction and maintenance of national buildings and infrastructure systems. As part of the CAS study, Golparvar-Fard will focus on developing machine learning and natural language processing techniques for construction planning and scheduling.
Verma has been named a CAS Fellow, the appointment given to untenured faculty members. Verma plans to develop a global collaboration to initiate and conduct targeted studies focused on assessing the health-relevant properties of the fine ambient particulate matter (PM2.5), an air pollutant responsible for significant air pollution-related mortality. While many of the properties of PM2.5 can easily be measured, current regulatory standards to control pollution only take one of those measurements – mass concentration – into account. Verma will work with the global cohort to establish a comprehensive suite of ambient PM2.5 properties, which can be used in future epidemiological and toxicological studies to identify which properties are most harmful.
Golparvar-Fard and Verma’s appointments will include one semester of release time to devote to their respective projects.