CE-CERT is proud to have 3 of our past researchers featured under UC Riverside’s 40 under 40 list: Charles Cai ’15, Harshit Agrawal ’09, and Joseph Silva ’11!
When starting his first research project at CE-CERT in 2011, Charles Cai was still a 2nd year PhD graduate student. He was tasked to develop cheaper and better ways to convert waste plant matter or "biomass" into sustainable alternatives for environmentally impacted petrochemicals and transportation fuels. Though I did not succeed at the time to make the products I wanted, I eventually managed to grasp the incredible complexity of biomass' natural structures and realized that the most difficult part to achieving my project goals was the need to develop a better way to break biomass down without causing too much damage to any of its components.
Working in a lab for more than 60 hours a week for 4 years was not easy, but I managed to accomplish my research goals before I graduated and even found more funding to support future research. Now, as a Professor, I am still using the methods I developed back when I was a student at CE-CERT to building exciting new and useful products from plants every day.
“The project was difficult and it required me to always bother the senior members of my group for help,” Cai recalls. Fortunately, with their support he was able to learn difficult laboratory techniques to highly intricate scientific concepts. Rajeev, Taiying, Hongjia, and Jaclyn, thank you so much.
Harshit Agrawal's first research experience at CE-CERT was traveling on-board a large cargo ship to measure and analyze particulate emissions. He is currently working on several projects, to support the Government of India achieve its goals of energy transition and climate change.
He loves to continuously seek new learning opportunities and to solve challenging problems using first principles.
"When I reflect on my past, I realize that times when I pushed myself out of my comfort zone were the most defining phases of my life!" said Agrawal.
Joseph Silva is the CEO & Co-Founder at VeriToll where he is pioneering the next generation of transportation and mobility solutions for public and private clients. Over the past decade, Joseph has transformed mobility in the Northern Virginia and Washington DC region through the development of the Express Lanes network. He integrated and engineered many of the core safety and revenue-critical systems that currently serve the millions of D.C. region drivers that use the I- 495, I-95 & I-395 Express Lanes.
Joseph has recently focused his work on modernizing revenue collection systems for roads and bridges. In the next decade, the looming shift to electric vehicle technology will force states and local governments to find alternative funding sources for our nation's most critical transportation infrastructure due to the gas tax collapsing. The technology platforms pioneered by Joseph, such as GoToll and CrowdToll, will be at the forefront of the next-generation revenue solutions that transform how state and local governments fund our infrastructure sustainably.
Joseph received his M.S. in Electrical Engineering at the University of California Riverside and has filed over seven patents in the past decade. Joseph is applying the knowledge and expertise developed at UCR to pursue his life's mission to solve mobility challenges for those in poverty through improving opportunity and access with creative payment solutions.
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