 Associate Professor Yong Cho with his Distinguished Professor award from the Construction Industry Institute. (Photo Courtesy: Construction Industry Institute) |
A consortium of construction firms has named Yong Cho its distinguished professor for 2018, recognizing his commitment to incorporating the latest industry research in his courses.
The Construction Industry Institute honors one college faculty member each year for using the newest published research in their teaching, creating innovative courses, and contributing to the organization.
“This award is very meaningful to me, because the leading academic and industry members in CII recognize my research-driven educational approach and service to the construction industry,” said Cho, an associate professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Also, my continuous efforts to reduce the gap between academic research and industry research have been well received by CII.”
Cho, who specializes in construction automation and robotics, has taught a best practices course based on the group’s published research for several years. Last year, he created a new graduate course on automation in construction that draws from CII’s methodologies and models as well as his own work.
 Associate Professor Yong Cho demonstrates some of his robotic technology at a Construction Industry Institute conference. This robot uses lasers and thermal imaging to generate a 3D point-cloud map of a construction site. (Photo Courtesy: Yong Cho) |
Cho also has been serving as the academic adviser to one of the institute’s five major programs, Fully Integrated & Automated Technologies, or FIATECH. He said that work pairs well with his role as chairman of an American Society of Civil Engineers committee focused on modeling, simulation and data visualization.
“Taking advantage of these current leadership positions, I plan to coordinate academic-industry collaboration to define the challenges faced by researchers and practitioners in putting research outcomes to practice,” he said, “all in service of positively impacting technology transfer from academic research to the [architecture-engineering-construction] industry.”
The recognition from the construction group caps a buys summer for Cho that also included winning the top paper award at the 25th International Workshop on Intelligent Computing in Engineering.