Spring 2021

New Kid on the Block

Grant winner and Assistant Professor Matthew Gombeda is discovering methods useful in precast concrete applications that incorporate high volumes of fly ash, an abundant coal byproduct of power plants in the U.S.
What’s Behind Those Ink Leaks

A team of faculty members and Pingkeng Wu (Ph.D. CHE ’19), fountain pen lovers all, published a paper about what causes those annoying leakage issues.

Inside this Issue

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The chief alumni publication of Illinois Institute of Technology, Illinois Tech Magazine is published as a print/web edition each spring and fall, and as a web-exclusive edition each summer by the Office of Marketing and Communications in collaboration with the Office of Advancement. It showcases outstanding Illinois Tech alumni who...

Letters

Letter from the President

I want to tell you that dreams really do come true. When I first entered into academic administration at Carnegie Mellon University in the 1980s, I told my wife, Anna, that I aspired to one day become a university president. Even with that goal in mind, I could never have imagined that I would succeed one of my great mentors, John L. Anderson, whom I met at Carnegie Mellon, when he and I would serve as president and provost, respectively, at Illinois Institute of Technology. When President Anderson retired as Illinois Tech’s eighth president in 2015, the members of the university’s Board of Trustees placed their confidence in me by naming me as the ninth president of this great institution.

On Campus

Letters

“I took note in your article ‘Twentieth-Century Celebrities Come to Campus’ that your reference was Irene Macauley’s book The Heritage of Illinois Institute of Technology, published in 1975.

On Campus

A Circuitous Journey

As a kid, Andy de Fonseca (AE 3rd Year) brought her telescope to school as a prop for picture day. But without high marks in her high school science classes, de Fonseca felt like space could only ever be a hobby for her. Instead, she pursued other interests, getting degrees in theater, cinematography, and history. De Fonseca worked in marketing and as a photographer, and she even published a science fiction novel with real scientific theories woven into a fantastical world.

On Campus

The Rice Stuff

Yuta Katsuyama (M.Des.+M.B.A. Candidate) saw a problem—the lack of the Japanese staple snack food onigiri, rice balls filled with meat and vegetables, in Chicago—that he thought he could solve with design. Through trial and error, and using the knowledge he gained in Institute of Design courses, Katsuyama found a solution: creating his own business, Onigiri Shuttle Kororin, which launched in July 2020.

On Campus

Will Work for Tail Scratches

Most days of the year, Grover, a 7-year-old black bassador (Labrador retriever-basset hound mix), spends his time romping around on a 10-acre farm in Peotone, Illinois, with his extended family of horses, donkeys, cows, goats, laying chickens, a turkey, a pony, and five other dogs.

On Campus

Illinois Tech Headliners

It was an ideal tool for women because the pots symbolized their femininity. But it also was a statement about the lack of food.

Research Briefs

Making Waste Useful

Finding ways to utilize fly ash is of interest to a variety of stakeholders in the United States, both from an environmental standpoint and as an attractive alternative for the concrete industry. Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering Matt Gombeda received a nearly $1 million grant in October to examine methods to incorporate fly ash in high volumes as a supplementary cementitious material (SCM) for precast concrete applications.

Research Briefs

Using Artificial Intelligence to Reduce Medical Radiation

Electrical and computer engineering professors Miles Wernick and Yongyi Yang landed $6 million in National Institutes of Health grants for their research using artificial intelligence to find health abnormalities in medical imaging scans taken with lower radiation doses, which allow patients to get life-saving care through safer procedures.

Research Briefs

Fountain Sleuths

“I love writing with fountain pens because they are a unique combination of beauty, tradition, and dexterity. In addition, they are ‘green,’ unlike ballpoints, where the refill must be discarded. A bottle of ink lasts for years!”— Professor Sohail Murad, Chair of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Research Briefs

COVID-19 Inhalant Therapies in the Pipeline

An inhalant therapy—CROWNase—developed by Illinois Institute of Technology researchers shows the potential to limit COVID-19 infection and is patent pending. Associate Professor of Biology Oscar Juarez conceptualized the project, with support from faculty members David Minh and Karina Tuz.

Athletics

Training Tabled

Never did Chapin Wehde imagine what the next year would entail when the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic struck home in March 2020. Illinois Institute of Technology’s head athletics trainer, assistant director of athletics, and senior women administrator, Wehde spent 11-plus months organizing, writing protocols, and doing all that she and her team—which includes assistant athletic trainers Sarah Wegrzyn and Evyn Nolette—could do to keep Scarlet Hawks student-athletes healthy. It was, in Wehde’s words, “so unreal.”

Features

Leaving His Mark as Leader, and as Friend

In his first interview for the winter 2009 issue of Illinois Tech Magazine, Alan W. Cramb, then the new Illinois Institute of Technology provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, shared his vision for adding to student potentiality.

Features

River Renovation

In 1993 brigades of volunteers, working alongside the United States National Guard, hastily filled sandbags to create makeshift dikes as flood water overtook the riverside town of Warsaw, Illinois––among them, then 8-year-old Jessica Henson (ARCH ’08). Heavy rainfall and colder than normal temperatures led to above-average soil moisture, causing hundreds of miles of the Mississippi River to swell and the ensuing flood to result in billions of dollars in damage. Known as the Great Flood of 1993, it remains as one of the worst floods in U.S. history.

Features

A Life Larger Than the Big Screen

Over the last 28 years, United States Marine Corps Brigadier General Len Anderson (STC ’93) has graduated from the Navy’s premier fighter pilot TOPGUN training school, participated in NATO-led airstrikes that helped end the Bosnian War, flown combat sorties over southern Iraq, and performed gravity-defying aerial moves with the Blue Angels precision flying team at airshows nationwide.

Features

Self Made

There was no college recruitment battle for Stephen Burks (DSGN ’92). He applied to just one school, Illinois Institute of Technology, though it was more like applying to a single building: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s S. R. Crown Hall.

Features

Stopping the Spread

The research laid bare what a growing number of scientists who studied indoor air believed: aerosol transmission of COVID-19 was not just possible, but was likely a key transmitter of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Among them was Parham Azimi (Ph.D. ENVE ’16), a research fellow at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, who led a team of scientists whose study of COVID-19 transmission on a cruise ship was among the first to show that aerosol transmission was a concern that needed to be taken seriously.

Features

Biomedical Engineer at Work:

By Simon Morrow Photos:Courtesy of Purdue University Chi Hwan Lee (ME ’07) is known for bringing people—and ideas—together. “He’s a social guy,” says Young Kim, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Purdue University. “He brings people out of their offices.” Lee’s friendly proactiveness spills over into his research. He...

Philanthropy News

Making a Big Swing for Illinois Tech Athletics

In 1988 Gerald “Jerry” Maatman (FPE ’51) invited his industry’s most powerful critic out for dinner. Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, was a lobbyist with a thick Rolodex and a grudge against auto insurers such as Kemper National Insurance Company, where Maatman had recently been appointed chief executive officer.