Dr. Navneet Garg is a Program Manager in Airport Technology R&D Branch at the FAA’s William J. Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and manages projects on Full-Scale Accelerated Pavement Testing, Field Instrumentation and Testing, and Pavement Materials. Navneet earned his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1997, M.S. in Civil Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, in 1993, and B.E in Civil Engineering from Karnataka Regional Engineering College (now National Institute of Technology), Suratkal, India, in 1990.

He has been actively involved in airport pavement research at the FAA’s National Airport Pavement Test Facility since 1998. He conceptualized and developed the FAA’s National Airport Pavement & Materials Research Center (NAPMRC) - a nine-million-dollar state-of-the-art research facility, developed the specifications (included in FAA advisory circular) for FAA customized asphalt pavement analyzer (APA), and developed a Strain Gage Based Sensor System to detect de-lamination/de-bonding in Hot Mix Asphalt (HMA) overlays at high speed exits on airports. He led the congressionally (US Congress) mandated study on "Operational Life of Airport Pavements".

Dr. Garg has authored several FAA technical reports, and over one hundred research papers for various peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. He teaches airport pavement design and evaluation workshops for ICAO, Asphalt Institute, Airport Consultants Council, and has been a member of several master’s and doctoral degree student’s thesis committees. In addition, he has mentored High School students under STEM program and summer interns at FAA WJHTC, and ACRP Student Grant recipients.

He is the winner of the “2018 T&DI Airfield Pavements Practitioner of the Year” award given by American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and the “2004 Engineer of the Year” award given by Southern New Jersey Professional Societies (American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics AIAA, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers IEEE, and IEEE Computer Society). He is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), current Chair of ASCE Airfield Pavements Committee, on Board of Directors of International Society for Asphalt Pavements (ISAP), and member of the TRB Committees on Geotechnical Instrumentation & Modelling (AKG60), and Aggregates (AKM80), and Associate Editor of International Journal of Pavement Engineering (IJPE). He is one of the founding members of non-profit organization EduContests (educontests.org), and volunteers for North South Foundation (northsouth.org).

Dr. Xiaojia Shelly Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She also holds an affiliate appointment at the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering. Dr. Zhang holds a B.S. (Honors) degree in Civil Engineering (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2012), an M.S. degree in Structural Engineering (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2014) with Computational Science and Engineering Diploma, and a Ph.D. degree in Structural Engineering (Georgia Tech, 2018). She received the faculty fellowship from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in 2019, and both the department-level (2018) and institution-level (2019) Best Ph.D. Thesis Awards. Dr. Zhang receives the NSF CAREER award in 2021.

Her research interests are in the general areas of topology optimization, additive manufacturing, data-driven models, multi-scale materials and structures, 3D/4D printing, and uncertainty quantification. Her research group focuses on exploring topology optimization, stochastic and machine learning algorithms, and additive manufacturing to develop multi-functional, sustainable, and innovative metamaterials, robots, and civil structures for applications at different scales, from as large as high-rise buildings to as small as material microstructures.

In August 2021, Dr. Zhang was invited to become a review editor of the journal Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization (SMO), considered the flagship journal in her research field. Typically, only tenured professors are invited to serve as review editors for SMO, but the journal made an exception in Zhang’s case, citing the fact that Zhang has already built a very strong reputation through her research and her strong commitment to serving the research community and recognizing her to be “among the most active and qualified reviewers” for SMO. The impact factor of SMO places it in the top 10 percent of journals in terms of the number of times its papers are cited.

In addition to her remarkable research accomplishments, Dr. Zhang has established herself as a leader in teaching and has been ranked “excellent” by her students for several semesters.

Richard Lanyon is an actively retired water resources engineer with a career of over 60 years in the urban water management field. Mr. Lanyon attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and received both his BSCE and MSCE. He was the former Executive Director of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD). He is considered an expert of water management in the Chicago area.

Mr. Lanyon spent the majority of his career at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) where he held different positions. Here he focused on waterway operations, pollution, flood control, water pollution, and research and development. He participated in working groups including the Water Quality Advisory Committee, National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Pilot Program, and the Chicago Rivers Demonstration Project Steering Committee.

Throughout his career he has published a series of books. His first book, “Building the Canal to Save Chicago” published in February 2012 describes the Chicago River project that reversed the flow of the river. In April 2016, he published his second book “Draining Chicago: The Early City and the North Area” focuses on the early years of the city sewer building. The third book he published “West by Southwest to Stickney: Draining the Central Area of Chicago and Exorcising Clout” describes the Chicago River and South Branch improvement. The final book in his series “Calumet, First and Forever: Draining the South Area of Chicago and Territorial Expansion: describes the MWRD’s first comprehensive plan for a system of sewerage and drainage to clean up pollution of Lake Michigan by the Calumet River.

To this date he is an active member of the American Society of Civil Engineers especially in their water resources division. He has held numerous officer positions within the society. He is also a member of the American Public Works Association, Water Environment Federation, American Academy of Environmental Engineers, the American Academy of Water Resource Engineers.

Jared Green is a professional geotechnical engineer with more than 17 years of experience ranging from initial subsurface investigations and schematic designs to construction phase oversight for complex projects. Mr. Green is currently a Senior Associate at Langan working out of the Philadelphia office. His time at Langan includes projects in the New York Metropolitan Area, Upstate New York, New Jersey, Eastern Pennsylvania, and Delaware. He leads multidisciplinary projects that include geotechnical instrumentation monitoring; analysis, design and construction inspection of foundation systems and retaining structures; evaluation of earth and rock slope stability; and preparation of geotechnical engineering reports.

Before entering the workforce, Mr. Green received a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Syracuse University and then completed a Masters of Science in Civil Engineering with a focus in Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a registered Professional Engineer in six states in the Northeast area.

As a consultant and team leader, he enjoys mentoring young engineers and first generation college students. Throughout his work he has been an instrumental part in increasing the number of pre-college students that are interested in STEM majors. He strives to make complex engineering topics relatable and understandable to people new to the field and to people who may be completely unfamiliar with engineering.

Mr. Green is the host of the Engineering Management Institute’s Geotechnical Podcast. In 2017, Mr. Green was named one of ENR New York’s Top 20 Under 40. In 2019, Mr. Green was inducted into the Academy of Geo-Professionals as a Diplomate of Geotechnical Engineering. He is one of the youngest engineers in the world to have received this certification.

Karren C. Kabbes received a B.S. in Civil Engineering (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) and a M.A.S. in Public Policy Analysis (University of Illinois, Chicago). She is currently the President of Kabbes Engineering, Inc. with over 30 years of experience in water resource and environmental engineering. Her wide ranging technical experience includes work in infrastructure sustainability: state and national water resource and floodplain management and regulations; watershed planning; federal, state and local permitting; grants; and FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program.

As part of KEI, Ms. Kabbes has acted as the principal or project manager for over 20 successful FEMA floodplain map revisions under the FEMA CLOMR and LOMR programs. She has served as an expert witness on floodplain and stormwater issues within Illinois, providing expert reports and successfully testifying in court.

Ms. Kabbes is active nationally in a number of national professional organizations. She is currently the President of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Environmental and Water Resources Institute, an organization that publishes six Journals regarding Hydrology, Hydraulics, Environmental Engineering, Irrigation and Drainage, Water Resources Planning and Management, Hazard Toxic and Radioactive Waste Management and Journal of Sustainable Water in the Built Environment.

She is a founding officer of the Illinois Association for Floodplain and Stormwater Management and was the Association of State Floodplain Manager's national conference technical chair in follow up to the 1993 flood that caused $15 billion worth of damages nationally.

John S. Popovics holds B.S. and M.S. degrees (Drexel University 1988 and 1990, respectively) in civil engineering, and a Ph.D. (The Pennsylvania State University 1994) in engineering science and mechanics. He has been on the faculty of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois since January 2002. He has also held the positions of Research Assistant Professor at Northwestern University, Assistant Professor at Drexel University, Guest Scientist at the German Federal Materials Research Institute (BAM-Berlin), Visiting Professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain and Visiting Researcher, Laboratoire Centrale des Pont et Chaussées (LCPC) in France.

Dr. Popovics teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses on materials properties, construction material corrosion and durability, concrete technology, and non-destructive testing.

Dr. Popovics is a member of the Acoustical Society of America, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Academy of Mechanics, and he is a named Fellow of the American Concrete Institute and the American Society for Nondestructive Testing. He participates as a voting member in five technical committees and currently serves as chair in two committees in these societies. He serves as associate editor of the Journal of Nondestructive Testing. He is affiliated with the Center for Advanced Cement-Based Materials (ACBM).

Dr. Popovics was the recipient of the National Science Foundation's CAREER award (1999), the American Society of Nondestructive Testing Fellowship Award 2012 and several teaching and advising awards from the University of Illinois.