Student profile: Jaime Hernandez-Urrea

Jaime Hernandez-Urrea, a doctoral student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was recently awarded the Transportation Research Board’s 2013–14 Graduate Research Award on Public Sector Aviation Issues. The award is jointly sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Department of Transportation. Hernandez-Urrea will be conducting a project titled “Airfield Pavement Response Due to Heavy Aircraft Takeoff: Advanced Modeling for Gear Interaction Consideration.”

Hernandez-Urrea is advised by Imad Al-Qadi, ICT director and professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Hernandez-Urrea is currently assisting with several projects related to wide-base tires. His dissertation focuses on modeling of tire–pavement interaction. He is also interested in instrumentation modeling. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the National University of Colombia at Medellin and a master’s degree from Ohio University.

In his spare time, Hernandez enjoys staying active through biking and running. He also enjoys spending time with his ICT student cohort. He says, “We have a lot of fun together, and that makes the stress of graduate school easier to manage.”