“I firmly believe that adults need room and time and space to play,” said Carly Kocurek, professor in the game design and experiential media program at Illinois Tech. The tile toward immersive experiences is “a growing trend in our media and entertainment landscape,” said Kocurek, citing the growth of escape rooms and themed restaurants as evidence of the societal hunger for escapist play.
“Being a civil engineer means you get to improve society,” said Mae Whiteside Williams, the CEO and owner of CKL Engineers and a graduate of Illinois Tech. “And I was always one of those kids who wanted to find a way to improve society. What better way than to be a civil engineer?"
A new federal law has earmarked $39 billion for semiconductor manufacturers, and Illinois Institute of Technology wants Chicago to be centerstage for the next generation of such vital technology. “By establishing this center on our campus in Bronzeville, the hope is to catalyze both workforce development of local workforce and regional workforce,” Illinois Tech Provost Ken Christensen says.
David Williams, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering led a research team that has for the first time successfully demonstrated the use of active flow control in an aircraft with no tail. Active flow control (AFC) allows an aircraft to be as smooth and sleek as possible, making it safer for the military to fly in dangerous areas where radar scans the sky for sharp edges. It could also be used to make commercial airplanes more fuel-efficient by removing existing steering parts that create drag. Partners on the project include researchers from the US Air Force Academy, the Office of Naval Research and UAV developer Astrium.
Mohammad Asadi, assistant professor of chemical engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology, has published a paper in the journal Science describing the chemistry behind his novel lithium-air battery design. The insights will allow him to further optimize the battery design, with the potential for reaching ultra-high power densities far beyond current lithium-ion technology. The battery design has the potential to store one kilowatt-hour per kilogram or higher—four times greater than lithium-ion battery technology, which would be transformative for electrifying transportation, especially heavy-duty vehicles such as airplanes, trains, and submarines.
Dimension Inx, a biomaterials startup developing 3D-printed medical implants, has raised new funding from investors. The startup, which has offices at Illinois Institute of Technology's tech incubator, said it closed on $12 million in a round led by Prime Movers Lab, with participation from KdT Ventures, Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Solas BioVentures, Portal Innovation Ventures and Alumni Ventures.
Daniel Spielman has a great ability “to come up with new approaches,” said Lance Fortnow, dean of the College of Computing at Illinois Institute of Technology. “It wasn’t like someone else had invented smoothed analysis and Spielman said, ‘Let’s try it on linear programming.’ This was, ‘I want to understand linear programming. What's the right way to do it?’”
“The term ‘patent troll’ may operate as a moral panic in a way that is detrimental to reasoned analysis and consideration of the root problems related to the issue of abusive patent litigation tactics,” Lee wrote in a law review article. Given the nature of the term and the negative way it has been used in news articles, he concluded that it would be prejudicial in the context of a patent trial.
“It’s kind of mind-boggling,” said Ross Barney, who will receive her award at the American Institute of Architects’ national convention in June in San Francisco. “I think we’ve been overlooked. I’m glad to shine a light on the city of Chicago. We export architecture. Great ideas happen here.”
Given her freewheeling embrace of the Institute of Design’s influential pedagogy, Henry hasn’t always been given the attention due. But her development of myriad design traditions will soon be on display, as the Hauser & Wirth Institute (HWI) has catalogued and digitized her archive (sketchbooks, photos, letters, artist statements, press clippings, drawings) and donated it to Paul V. Galvin Library University Archives at the Illinois Institute of Technology, which is integrating the Henry archive into their digital catalogue.
