UIC faculty members receive Fulbright U.S. Scholar Awards
UIC faculty researchers Craig Foster and Carmen Lilley have received the prestigious Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award for the 2025-26 academic year.
Over nearly 80 years, the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Awards have supported 50,000 researchers to study and teach abroad. Fulbright awards support global problem-solving through international cooperation, expanding scholars’ perspectives and enriching their labs and classrooms. Through their work, program alums have earned 63 Nobel Prizes, 98 Pulitzer Prizes and 82 MacArthur Fellowships. This year, more than 400 Fulbright awards were distributed to people in 135 countries.
Craig Foster is a professor of civil, materials and environmental engineering at UIC. He studies computational mechanics and uses computers to model how materials like soil, concrete and even human corneas behave — and sometimes fail — under stress. Understanding how objects absorb force can inform how roads, bridges and medical procedures are designed.
This is Foster’s second Fulbright Scholar Award, and he’ll go to Santiago, Chile, in spring 2026. In 2016, he partnered with the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. This time, he’ll collaborate with geophysicists at the University of Chile to study intermediate-depth earthquakes, which shake the Earth from 60-300 kilometers below the surface.
Chile is one of the few places in the world where we can study intermediate-depth earthquakes created by subduction, that is, when one of Earth’s tectonic plates slides under another. After examining these processes, Foster will develop computer models to simulate them.
“Intermediate-depth earthquakes account for 20% of all large earthquakes,” Foster said. “But we can’t currently predict them. Developing earthquake simulations will help us plan for and adapt to these disasters and adjust civil infrastructure accordingly.”
In addition to conducting research, Foster will present a short lecture series at the University of Chile.
Carmen Lilley is an associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering and an associate dean in the College of Engineering. She has 22 years of research experience at UIC.
In her lab, Lilley develops nano- and quantum-scale films with engineered properties. She combines computer modeling and predictive technology to tailor these ultra-thin films for use in electronic materials.
“Ideally, an engineer is building an electronic device requiring fabrication with nanoscale thin-film materials. I study the fabrication of these materials, simulating their properties and looking at failure and defects,” Lilley said.
In spring 2026, Lilley will travel to Italy’s Polytechnic University of Milan to learn two ultrafast spectroscopy techniques, photoemission and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. Learning these techniques will let Lilley study thin films using state-of-the-art laser-based experiments.
“I am most excited to continue learning new experimental research skills. Engaging collaboratively with others motivates me professionally and personally,” Lilley said. “I am also looking forward to learning basic Italian language skills and attending an opera at La Scala, which is on my bucket list.”
