Awards and honors

The following Illinois Center for Transportation-affiliated researchers have recently been recognized with the following awards and honors:

Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) professor Timothy Stark’s, “Case Study: Vertical Drain and Stability Analyses for a Compacted Embankment on Soft Soils,” was selected as this month’s Editor’s Choice for the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering. Another one of his papers, “Progression of Elevated Temperatures in Municipal Solid Waste Landfills,” was also selected as Editor’s Choice for the ASCE SmartBrief promotion to appeal to practitioners in August, 2017.

Stark was also principal investigator on project R27-145: Modified Standard Penetration Test–based Drilled Shaft Design Method for Weak Rocks (Phase 2 Study), which will be featured at the Illinois Transportation and Highway Engineering (THE) Conference on March 1st.

Bliss Professor of Engineering Imad Al-Qadi was appointed an honorary chair at the Harbin Institute of Technology, China.

Student Punit Singhvi received the Marshall Thompson Student Research Award at the 58th Annual Illinois Bituminous Paving Conference for playing an instrumental role on the ICT/IDOT R27-128 project that led to the development of the I-FIT protocol.

The American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) Transportation and Development Institute (T&DI) Graduate Student Organization won the University of Illinois’ Engineering Council’s Society of the Month Award for December 2017. The society is run by CEE students Mohammed Sawalha (President), Izak Said (Vice President), Punit Singhvi (Treasurer), Arturo Espinoza (Secretary), Fazal Safi (Professional Development Chair), Issam Qamhia (Intra-university Outreach Chair), Jose Rivera-Perez (Social Media Chair), and Egemen Okte (Photographer).

Congratulations to all!