People

Director

Dr. Chenhui Shao (Profile Page, Google Scholar, CV)
Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Education:
Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, 2016
M.A. in Statistics, University of Michigan, 2013
M.S.E. in Industrial and Operations Engineering, University of Michigan, 2013
B.E. in Automation, University of Science and Technology of China, 2009


Short bio: Chenhui Shao is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is an affiliate member of the Institute for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Access (IDEA) at Illinois. Chenhui worked with Dr. S. Jack Hu and Dr. Jionghua (Judy) Jin for his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research interests focus on smart manufacturing, machine learning, statistics, materials joining, and manufacturing systems control and automation. Chenhui’s honors and awards include NSF CAREER Award, ASME Chao and Trigger Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, IISE Manufacturing and Design (M&D) Division Outstanding Young Investigator Award, SME Barbara M. Fossum Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, SME 30 Under 30 Honoree, and Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research at Illinois. His research contributions have been recognized by multiple best paper awards and the Manufacturing USA Report. In 2021, he was selected as one of 30 nationwide to attend the ASEE DELTA Junior Faculty Institute. At Illinois, he is routinely named to UIUC’s List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students. Chenhui currently serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Manufacturing Processes.

Phone: +1 (217) 300-4750
Email: chshao@illinois.edu
Address: 2030 Sidney Lu Mechanical Engineering Building, 1206 W. Green St., Urbana, IL 61801

Ph.D. Students

Mr. Siyuan Chen (Ph.D., 2017 – present)
Siyuan Chen is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at UIUC. He received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University in 2017. During his undergraduate studies, Siyuan engaged in the development of a fully-automated 3D printing service, Maker Commons, as an undergraduate researcher. His research focuses on sensor integration and algorithm for monitoring, diagnosis and control of manufacturing processes.
Email: siyuanc2@illinois.edu
Address: 2038 Sidney Lu Mechanical Engineering Building, 1206 W. Green St., Urbana, IL 61801

Mr. Zhiqiao Dong (Ph.D., 2019 – present)
Zhiqiao Dong is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at UIUC. He received his B.E. in Automation and B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2019. His research interests include modeling, monitoring and control in manufacturing. He is currently working on modeling and interpolation of spatial process.
Email: zhiqiao5@illinois.edu
Address: 2038 Sidney Lu Mechanical Engineering Building, 1206 W. Green St., Urbana, IL 61801

Ms. Shichen Li (Ph.D., 2019 – present)
Shichen Li is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at UIUC. She received her B.S. Degree in Aerospace Engineering from Beihang University in 2019, and M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from UIUC in 2021.. Her research interests include data science, machine learning, and their applications in manufacturing. She is currently working on leveraging artificial intelligence techniques to enhance the intelligence of convective air-drying processes.
Email: shichen8@illinois.edu
Address: 2038 Sidney Lu Mechanical Engineering Building, 1206 W. Green St., Urbana, IL 61801

Mr. Kuan-Chieh Lu (Ph.D., 2019 – present)
Kuan-Chieh Lu is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at UIUC. He received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from National Taiwan University, where he studied robotic design and dynamic system simulation. His research interest includes control theorem and quality control.  He is currently working on the development of a real-time controller for ultrasonic welding and the application of machine learning in quality control.
Email: kclu3@illinois.edu
Address: 2038 Sidney Lu Mechanical Engineering Building, 1206 W. Green St., Urbana, IL 61801

Ms. Sixian Jia (Ph.D., 2020 – Present)
Sixian Jia is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at UIUC. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in 2020. Her research interests are machine learning and Gaussian Processes Regression in smart manufacturing. She is working on machine learning, data analytic, and modeling with two-photon lithography.
Email: sixianj2@illinois.edu
Address: 2038 Sidney Lu Mechanical Engineering Building, 1206 W. Green St., Urbana, IL 61801

Mr. Li-Wei Shih (Ph.D., 2021 – Present)
Li-Wei Shih is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at UIUC. He received his dual B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering from National Taiwan University. His research interest includes computer vision, data science, robotics, and control theorem. He is currently working on vision-based human action recognition in manufacturing.
Email: liweiws2@illinois.edu
Address: 2038 Sidney Lu Mechanical Engineering Building, 1206 W. Green St., Urbana, IL 61801

Ms. Alice Mei (Ph.D., 2021 – Present)
Alice Mei is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at UIUC. She received her B.S. (with the highest university honors) in Mechanical Engineering from National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in 2021. Her research interests include data science, quality control, and robotics in manufacturing. She is currently working on leveraging 3D point cloud data with deep learning to help decision-making in manufacturing.
Email: rsmei2@illinois.edu
Address: 2038 Sidney Lu Mechanical Engineering Building, 1206 W. Green St., Urbana, IL 61801

Mr. Ahmadreza Eslaminia (Ph.D., 2021 – Present)
Ahmadreza is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at UIUC co-advised by Prof. Klara Nahrstedt from the CS department. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Sharif University of Technology in 2020. His research interests include machine learning, federated learning, deep learning, and Internet of Things applications in smart manufacturing. He is currently working on integrating internal cyber data and environmental sensory data for a cyber-manufacturing environment.
Email: ae15@illinois.edu
Address: 2038 Sidney Lu Mechanical Engineering Building, 1206 W. Green St., Urbana, IL 61801

Graduate Alumni

  • Manan Mehta (Ph.D., 2024), C3.ai
  • Rainers Meng (Ph.D., 2023)
  • Yuhang Yang (M.S., 2017; Ph.D., 2022), Meta
  • Yulun Wu (M.S., 2021), pursuing Ph.D. in ISE Department at UIUC
  • Min-Hsiu Hsu (M.S., 2021), Apple
  • Qasim Nazir (M.S., 2020), MathWorks

M.S. Research

Venkata Sai Sujan Bommidala, Haotian Chen, Dayae Frail, Ruifan Li, Zhe Liu, Xudong Shao, Letao Wang, Yihan Wang, Jiaxin Wu, Yao Xue, Weiye Zhang, Di Zhu

Undergraduate Research Assistants / Alumni

Abdullah Raafat Alfaraj, Abdulrahman Alshareef, Osama Hisham Azhar, Seenara Khan, John-Luc Pec, Dingyu Peng, Qinan Zhou, Riya Agrawal, Qianmeng Chen, Sude Ela Demir, Yutian Gao, Jingying He, Jihwan Jeong, David Lee, Justin Miner, Jaehyeon Park, Corynne Roberts, Luwen Sun, Jiashuo Tong, Shang-Ming Wang, Christopher Wong, Ziran Zhou, Kangyu Zhu