Two engineering graduate students win awards to conduct research overseas

Two Engineering at Illinois doctoral students--Evgueni Filipov and Andrew Mock, both in civil engineering--have won Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide (GROW) awards from the National Science Foundation.

The GROW program, which began this year, is a partnership between NSF and select international funding agencies that allows current NSF fellows to conduct extended research overseas. Participating countries are Denmark, Finland, France, Japan, Korea, Norway, Singapore and Sweden. GROW provides recipients $5,000 to cover travel and research costs; host countries contribute allowances for living expenses.

Filipov, of Watertown, Conn., will conduct studies applying the mathematical principles of origami to architectural design so that buildings can be better constructed to withstand natural forces such as earthquakes and hurricanes. He will work for seven months in Japan with professors Yasushi Yamaguchi and Tomohiro Tachi at the University of Tokyo.

“I want to create cost effective, aesthetically inspiring, safe and resilient building structures that can morph and adapt to adverse conditions,” Filipov said. “The buildings would be of particular importance in developing nations to provide safe and economic real estate development, and also rapidly deployable shelters that could be used in disaster relief efforts.”

Mock, of Edmond, Okla., will conduct structural dynamics research in France for seven months at the École Normale Supérieure de Cachan with Fabrice Gatuingt. Mock will devise computational models to predict how cracks in concrete form and propagate under stressful conditions. The models will be applicable to bridges, buildings, and other structures.

“Although advances in materials and design methodologies have improved the strength and durability of concrete structures, designers still lack reliable computational tools for predicting the complete response of structures to gravity, wind, earthquake, and time dependent effects,” Mock said. “To improve these predictions, our research aims to create and validate a computational model that will better describe the behavior along a crack in reinforced concrete.”

Nardine Abadeer (chemistry) was the third University of Illinois graduate student to win the GROW award this year, and all three winners are fellows in the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship program.

Ken Vickery, the director of external fellowships in the U. of I. Graduate College, said: “An international experience can add a vital facet to a student’s graduate education, so it’s great that NSF is fostering these overseas research opportunities through the GROW program. With science becoming increasingly borderless, it’s important for graduate students to cultivate a global sensibility and start building their own international networks, and GROW is helping students do just that.” 
________________________

Writer: Earn Phatthamon Saenmuk, intern, University of Illinois News Bureau, 217/333-1085.

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