CEE's latest additions bring top-notch ideas

Give a big, warm welcome to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s three new transportation additions.

Meet Ramez Hajj, Eleftheria Kontou and Alireza Talebpour — all of whom join the rank of assistant professor in the Spring 2020 semester. Without further ado, let’s get to know CEE’s newcomers in a Q&A.

 

Ramez Hajj

Say hello to Ramez Hajj, a Blacksburg, Virginia, native, who earned his bachelor’s from Virginia Tech and his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Texas at Austin — all in civil and environmental engineering.

Q: What sparked your interest in civil engineering?

A: “What attracted me to it was you aren’t actually designing a product, you are doing something for the public,” Hajj said.

“For CEE, those are the things we use every single day,” he said. “So every day we drive on pavements, every day we drive over bridges. All the facets of civil engineering affect us every single day, and (they) affect every single person in the world.”

Q: What were some of the unique positions you held prior to this one?

A: “When I was in undergrad, the first job I ever had was a lab tech at one of the labs on campus, an aerospace lab,” Hajj said. “(I) did some very cool stuff with aerospace engineering, and then I got involved with the transportation institute there.”

“The transportation (research) I was doing was nothing related to anything I am doing now,” he joked. “I was doing motorcycle safety stuff. That was my first transportation-related job. (I) was watching videos of motorcycle riders and seeing what they were doing right and wrong.”

Q: What research do you hope to conduct?

A: “My research, I like to think of it as a past, present, future, so in the past I have been working on a lot of the problems in asphalt materials, (such as) how do we take those material fundamental properties and transfer those into the field to control distresses and premature pavement failure,” Hajj said.

“Presently, I’m kind of just working on getting those fundamentals down and really understanding from all scales, so molecular, atomic ― all the way up to the full-pavement scale (and) what the material looks like,” he added.

“Then in the future, what I’m hoping to do is help us get towards that next generation of pavement materials, so really start to think about what do green pavements look like? What do pavements look like once we get passed that point where we are now, where fossil fuels aren’t going to be here forever,” he said. “So kind of just looking at all of those aspects (and) where I see things going in the future.”

 

Eleftheria Kontou

Give it up for Eleftheria Kontou, a Volos, Greece, native, who earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees ― all in civil engineering ― from the National Technical University of Athens (Athens, Greece), Virginia Tech and the University of Florida, respectively.

Q: What made you interested in civil engineering?

A: “As a student, I was performing well in math and physics courses,” Kontou said. “After being introduced to different career options through a school course and knowing that I had good grades so that I could become part of an engineering school, I decided to pursue this as a career.”

Q: What made you interested in working for UIUC?

A: “I would say the research excellence and the quality of the students,” Kontou said.

“When I joined the University of Illinois, (that) was an ah-ha moment,” she said. “(I thought), ‘My hard work has finally paid out, and now I get the opportunity to tap into the great talent of the civil engineering students that we have, mentor them, and continue producing high-visibility and high-impact research,’” she added. “And of course have the opportunity to educate them and contribute towards building the workforce of the future that will lead our civil engineering field.”

Q: What will you be doing in terms of research?

A: “My group focuses on sustainable transportation systems, planning and operations research,” Kontou said. “I’m currently working on transportation electrification and all of the charging infrastructure deployment that we need in order to support the operation of electric vehicles.”

“And (I’m also working on) the policy framework that we need to have in place in order to accelerate this decarbonization of the transportation sector,” she added. “(I hope to) generate new knowledge and provide policymakers with frameworks to make wiser, more informed decisions (in order) to make sure that our transportation system is more energy efficient and sustainable.”

 

Alireza Talebpour

CEE also welcomes Alireza Talebpour, a native of Zanjan, Iran, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Sharif University of Technology (Tehran, Iran) and his doctoral degree from Northwestern University— all in civil and environmental engineering.

Q: In your last gig, you were an assistant professor at Texas A&M. What made you interested in joining UIUC’s efforts?

A: “Illinois is home,” Talebpour said. “When I came to the U.S., I went to Chicago. So this for me was a homecoming.”

“The quality of the school and the opportunities that I could have here were motivation for me to move,” he added, “especially a lot of the new initiatives going on in terms of the areas of connected and automated vehicles, the I-ACT (the Illinois Autonomous and Connected Track), the new Center for Autonomy and many others happening around the campus.”

Q: What’s some of the exciting research you hope to accomplish?

A: “My research is focused on connected and autonomous vehicles, but what I’m interested in is mainly looking into what I can do in terms of understanding the changes in human behavior in the era that you see automated vehicles,” Talebpour said. “So I want to see how your car’s lane changing and merging and stopping and (how) those behaviors will change if you start to see automated cars around you.”

“This (I-ACT) is something I’m super excited about,” he said. “All of the testing environments that are under development and everything, I think that will create a very unique environment for the state and possibly the country.”

“As a university, we will always be in a position to do this high level of research ― things that industry might not see as an immediate benefit in and might never try, but might have a huge potential,” he added.

Q: What’s the legacy you hope to leave at UIUC?

A: “One is I want to make sure that I can contribute as much as I can to the activities that are happening around the state in the area of connected and automated vehicles,” he said.

“I also want to be recognized as a great teacher for the school and the community,” he said. “Because essentially, the connection between these two are great students require great teachers,” he added. “I’m trying to (have) great research in this area and all over the state and possibly the country, but also be a great teacher ― they can both go hand in hand.”