High Speed Rail Academic Alliance

TC Kao, third from right, pictured with colleagues at the conference.

September 2017: TC Kao, RailTEC Research Professor and Director – High Speed Rail System, represented RailTEC at the International Union of Railways (UIC) High-Speed Rail Academic Alliance Workshop in London on September 21 – 22, 2017. The conference was organized by Professor Roderick Smith and UIC and was held at Imperial College. TC gave a presentation on the UIUC RailTEC program (as well as NTUs) and participated in the discussions.

Undergraduate Research Fair

Brandon Wang, a RailTEC Ph.D. student, talks with a UIUC undergrad.

September 2017: Eight RailTEC students volunteered to work at the Fall Undergraduate Research Resource Fair on Monday, September 25, 2017 in the Illini Union. This was a great way to spread awareness of the research RailTEC is doing and potentially recruit new students. The resource fair helps engineering undergraduate students gather information on how to get involved in research, meet people from different research laboratories and undergraduate research programs, and listen to their peers talk about their undergraduate research experiences.

AREMA 2017

September 2017: Congratulations to the 2017 AREMA Quiz Bowl Championship-winning team from the University of Illinois! This is the fourth straight year the UIUC student chapter has won first place. Left to right: Stan Chang, Darkhan Mussanov, Jacob Rajlich, Zezhou Wang, and Wesley Chen. Of the top five winners this year, two were NURail member teams and two were NURail affiliates.

New Master of Engineering in Railway Engineering Degree

September 2017: The Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is offering a new Master of Engineering in Railway Engineering program. This non-thesis master's degree can be earned in 3 semesters and includes an international exchange semester with KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. This degree helps address growth in the rail industry which has led to a substantial demand for a new generation of professionals educated in the principles of railway engineering. It provides a broad interdisciplinary education in railway engineering for a variety of professional career-track students. For more program details, click here.

RailTEC Attending IHHA

August 2017: Two RailTEC faculty and four students are travelling to attend the 11th International Heavy Haul Association (IHHA) Conference in Cape Town South Africa on September 2 – 6, 2017. RailTEC has a total of 11 faculty and student papers and presentations at the conference. To see our IHHA conference booklet, click here. The IHHA conference includes presentations of technical papers in research and development areas such as Rolling Stock and Railway Infrastructure and Operations, and aims to address recent the market downturn characterized by low commodity prices, low GDP growth rates, and slowdown in demand for freight bulk commodities such as coal and iron ore.