College invests in Strategic Research Initiatives

“We believe the future of engineering innovation, as it applies to grand societal challenges, lies in interdisciplinary cooperation and collaboration,” stated Ilesanmi Adesida, dean of the College of Engineering. “We encourage faculty to pursue intellectually diverse projects which are of substantial scientific promise and address those issues which will be appropriately the interest of many funding agencies.”

To help grow its research program and support collaboration in new and emerging areas, the College of Engineering has recently initiated a new program entitled Strategic Research Initiatives (SRI). The intent of the program, which grew out of discussions at the College Leadership Retreat, is to place Illinois in a clear leadership position in promising new and growing areas of engineering research. SRI will support early stage research—the initiation and exploration of new research—through strategic investment in the form of seed funding. Late-stage funding will support projects that develop engineering leadership by collecting and building on existing capabilities in units or groups to form a new interdisciplinary focus areas or centers.

“Foremost in these efforts, is a goal to seed high‐impact research activity that will lead to significant and large‐scale funded research efforts,” Adesida added. “In order to make this truly interdisciplinary, we solicited proposals that involve colleagues from across the Illinois’ campus.” Earlier this spring, the College solicited proposals from Engineering at Illinois faculty.

Four early-stage projects were selected for initial SRI funding:

1. Systems biology of cellular decisions
Sheng Zhong, bioengineering; Taekjip Ha, physics; Fei Wang, cell and molecular biology

The goal of this proposal is to develop integrated engineering, computational, and genetic tools to address one of the most fundamental questions in biology: How does a single cell—the fertilized egg—give rise to a complex, multicellular organism? Resolving this question will lead to mechanistic understanding of cell-fate decisions, and thus, reveal fundamental principles of the making of normal and abnormal cells, including cancer. The ideas, technologies, models, and software developed in this project will not only be applicable to understanding early embryonic development and disorders, but also will become general and essential tools for future studies of causal relationships leading to development of body structures, neural systems, internal organs, and tumorigenesis. Because this requires fundamental breakthroughs in mathematical, engineering, and experimental sciences synergistically, the University of Illinois is uniquely positioned to push the frontier of biology and engineering.

2. A Theory of Cognitive and Algorithmic Decision Making
Andrew C. Singer, Tamer Başar, and Maxim Raginsky, electrical and computer engineering; Karrie Karahalios and Svetlana Lazebnik, computer science; Angelia Nedich, industrial and enterprise systems engineering,  Christian Sandvig, College of Media, LAS, GSLIS and Coordinated Science Laboratory

This project will explore decision making from a broad, multidisciplinary point of view, pairing strengths at Illinois in engineering decision theory and machine learning with the emerging science of social networks and expertise in human decision making to consider the next generation of human-machine (cognitive-algorithmic) decision systems. Researchers from the College of Engineering will collaborate with campus leaders in psychology, communication, sociology, economics, and political science to develop the field of cognitive and algorithmic decision theory. By developing the mathematical framework for incorporating behavioral and social dynamics into traditional mathematical decision making, Illinois team members will establish themselves as thought leaders in this new field. Problem areas of interest to federal, philanthropic foundation, and industrial sponsors include data-driven and machine-aided battlefield decision making, economic and financial forecasting making use of algorithmic data mining/modeling together with cognitive/social investor/consumer behavior, marketing and politics in the era of social networks, decision-theoretic tools for enhancing/improving medical diagnosis and treatment planning, and data representation and visualization methods for enhancing the performance of human decision making.

3. Interfaces at the Ultimate Limit
N. R. Aluru, mechanical science and engineering; David Ceperley and Lucas Wagner,  physics;  Joseph Lyding,  electrical and computer engineering

Fundamental studies on interfaces—between hard and soft materials, between heterogeneous hard materials, between heterogeneous soft materials, between biotic and abiotic materials, and various other types of complex interfaces—have led to breakthrough advances in electronics, computer, mechanical, aerospace, energy, and health care sectors. The objective of this effort is to initiate fundamental studies on understanding interfaces between materials which approach their ultimate (smallest) thickness limit. In this research, interfaces between single-atom thick graphene and a single-layer of water will be considered. Utilizing the petascale computing facilities at Illinois, combined with novel experimental approaches to probe single-layer water, the researchers envision unprecedented physical insights into graphene-water interfaces paving the way for scientific breakthroughs in areas such as low energy desalination of water and very high efficiency separation of various mixtures of gases.

4. Interrogation of Special Nuclear Material Using the UIUC Pulsed Neutron Facility
Brent J. Heuser and Ling-Jian Meng, nuclear, plasma, and radiological engineering; Matthias Grosse Perdekamp, physics

Nuclear security has become very important both domestically and internationally. The ability to monitor port-of-entry, to track fissile material across international borders, to properly safeguard the nation’s nuclear weapon stockpile, and to develop nuclear counterterrorism measures all require the development of innovative technology and technical expertise in special nuclear material (SNM) detection. This proposal is aimed at developing the technical infrastructure and expertise within the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering for studying SNM. The initiative brings together three faculty members with contrasting expertise spanning nuclear materials and neutron transport simulation, radiological imaging, and particle physics, and leverages existing equipment (the Pulsed Neutron Facility and specialized gamma-ray detectors) to create a novel capability at Illinois—the ability to perform research related to the interrogation of SNM and neutron science.

Two late-stage projects were selected for funding:

1. Beyond Speech: Towards an Interdisciplinary Study of Sound
Paris Smaragdis, computer science and electrical and computer engineering; Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, electrical and computer engineering; Rob A. Rutenbar, computer science; J. Stephen Downie, Graduate School of Library and Information Science; Heinrich K. Taube, School of Music

The University of Illinois has a long history of studying sound—pioneering sound-on-film, computer music, bioacoustics, hearing research, and speech studies within the College of Engineering and across campus. As a multifaceted science that is still not fully understood by any one discipline yet, the academic study and exploitation of sound is extremely broad, as are new applications. Industrial giants such as Bell, Apple, Sony, and Motorola can each trace their biggest successes to audio products. Similarly, the future holds significant promise in areas as audio recognition for computers and robotics, universal language applications, signal processing, and new music, as well as recordings and audio databases for applications such as sound and music retrieval, biomedical diagnosis, ocean monitoring, geophysical activity, and mechanical operations. The goal of is proposal is to provide a common home for sound-related research that focuses on Illinois’ expertise and interdisciplinary capabilities in the field.

2. Digital/Cyber Security and Nuclear Security
Rizwan Uddin, nuclear, plasma, and radiological engineering; William Sanders, electrical and computer engineering and Coordinated Sciences Laboratory (with additional collaborators from NPRE and CSL)

The nuclear industry and homeland security establishments have an urgent need to continuously push the state of the art to develop new, advanced, and nuclear-grade digital control and cyber security technologies. Because of its existing expertise in nuclear engineering, and in digital and cyber security, the University of Illinois is uniquely positioned to develop a national center for digital instrumentation and control, and for cyber security for nuclear-specific applications. Work is already underway in NPRE on the development of a test bed to simulate cyber attacks at a nuclear power plant, and CSL has recently acquired a state-of -the-art fault tolerant controller based on a Triple-Modular Redundant (TMR) architecture. The goal is to marry the expertise available at NPRE and CSL (and in other parts of the college and campus) to develop a center for digital (control) and cyber security for nuclear-specific applications. In addition to integrating the available expertise, the project will include an international workshop on campus in spring 2013 to present Illinois’ leadership in this area.

According to Adesida, both categories aim to support team‐building activities that lead to the establishment of Illinois as a known leader in the proposed fields, taking advantage of the tools and talents that already exist on campus as well as new synergies that will surely develop.
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Contact: Michael Bragg, executive associate dean for academic affairs, College of Engineering, 217/333-2152

If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, writer/editor, Engineering Communications Office, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 217/244-7716.