Lama Abufares earned her bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 2020 from Birzeit University, Palestine, and her master's degree in transportation engineering (TE) in 2022 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where she is pursuing her PhD in civil and environmental engineering. She is specializing in the automation and nondestructive testing of infrastructure through sensing technologies and data-driven methods like optimization and machine learning. Using ground-penetrating radar (GPR), she developed advanced signal analysis techniques, conducted material testing in the lab, and led the installation of the newly developed GPR setup on a field compactor. She has filed a U.S. patent for this innovation, which monitors asphalt pavement quality during construction and is under negotiation with an Italian company for marketing. As a future faculty member, she hopes to further contribute to these emerging areas, which she believes could transform the future of infrastructure management and offer significant opportunities for advancement in policy, standards, decision making, and forensic analysis. At UIUC, she has served as a Grainger Engineering Diversity Ambassador, led the weekly Kent Seminar Series in which top transportation experts share their insights, and co-led Kent Around the World featuring presentations from international scholars. As a faculty member, Abufares looks forward to designing new courses in her field, which she views as widely unrepresented in current curricula. She also intends to actively bridge her research and teaching by incorporating case studies, hands-on labs, and student-led research projects.

Research Interests

Transportation infrastructure, nondestructive testing, asphalt materials and pavement performance, optimization and signal processing