Three undergraduates from two NURail CoE partners were interns this summer for the Rail Transportation and Engineering Center (RailTEC) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. RailTEC welcomed Brandi Thomas, a rising senior at Tuskegee University, Gary Bonds III, also a rising senior at Tuskegee University, and Matthew Cheruiyot, a rising junior from Morgan State University.
As part of NURail CoE’s mission to educate a new generation of students in railway transportation engineering and provide them with the knowledge to implement these solutions, RailTEC decided to offer summer internships to students from NURail CoE partner institutions. After applying and interviewing for the job, Brandi, Gary and Matthew were offered positions, with Brandi and Matthew even passing up other opportunities for the chance to work at RailTEC.
All three students have been impressed with Illinois including the facilities available, the modern technology and the overall atmosphere. They also agree they like the communal research setting.
“Everyone here is so kind and knowledgeable. I really appreciate the way the program is run and the way everyone knows what they need to do and how to do it. It’s impressive.” Brandi said. She also mentioned that the most interesting thing she learned was about track buckling and how important maintenance is.
This summer Brandi’s work included analyzing railroad maintenance data and conducting hands-on testing for torsional resistance research. She also developed a CAD model of the torsional resistance test setup to support future finite element method (FEM) analysis under the guidance of Kaifeng Hu, a RailTEC Ph.D. student. Because of her summer internship Brandi is thinking about a career in rail now, but as an aerospace science engineering major she is torn because “propulsion is also very interesting.”
Gary worked with RailTEC Ph.D. student Kamyar Kosameshan analyzing BNSF railroad tight rail event data, building a Python-based pipeline that combines weather data with rail track data to study seasonal trends and derailment risk. He also developed and refined a linearized energy balance model to predict rail temperature, which is a key factor in preventing rail buckling.
Graduating next year with a degree in aerospace science engineering, Gary will follow his family’s tradition with a future in the Air Force. According to Gary, “This internship gave me hands-on experience turning messy, real-world data into something that could actually help prevent rail failures — that’s been the most rewarding part.”
Spending the summer working with Ph.D. student Jose Gustavo Ramos, Matthew analyzed track images taken with a drone and identified points of interest (anchors, crossties and rail marks), so it can be determined how these features moved over time. “Rail neural temperature is a magical thing,” Matthew said. “I also enjoyed going out on the track, but not the time of day we had to get up.”
Jose Gustavo said, “Having Matthew here has been a great help for our group. Since the first day he has shown a lot of enthusiasm and interest about railroads and the specific work we are conducting. With good questions and smart work he has been helping on our data collection to better understand the longitudinal behavior of the track.”
As for Matthew’s future he hopes to have a career in rail, but hasn’t decided on what aspect. “Right now everything seems interesting”, he said.
In addition to their research responsibilities this summer the interns were also able to attend the 8th International Crosstie and Fastening System Symposium where they made industry contacts and learned about collaboration on design and performance challenges and solutions for crossties and fastening systems.
