Bretl, Bodony Earn Promotions

7/11/2013 Susan Mumm

Timothy W. Bretl and Daniel J. Bodony have been promoted from Assistant to Associate Professor in Aerospace Engineering at Illinois.

Written by Susan Mumm

Timothy W. Bretl and Daniel J. Bodony have been promoted from Assistant to Associate Professor in Aerospace Engineering at Illinois.

Timothy W. Bretl
Timothy W. Bretl
Timothy W. Bretl

Bretl’s research interests are theoretical and algorithmic foundations of robotics and automation; and motion planning, control and optimization. He holds affiliate appointments in the Coordinated Science Laboratory, the Department of Computer Science, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Neuroscience Program, and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

Joining the AE Department in 2006, Bretl garnered a Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation in 2010. He and his student, Zoe McCarthy, won the 2012 Best Manipulation Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. Bretl and Dennis Matthews were finalists for the 2012 ICROS Best Application Paper Award during the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Systems.

Bretl earned bachelor’s degrees in engineering and mathematics in 1999 from Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He earned a master’s degree and PhD in aeronautics and astronautics in 2000 and 2005, respectively, from Stanford University.

Daniel J. Bodony
Daniel J. Bodony
Daniel J. Bodony

Bodony studies aeroacoustics, compressible turbulence, wave propagation, fluid-structure interaction, aerothermoelasticity, numerical algorithms for massively parallel computing and computational fluid mechanics. He is an affiliate of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA); the Department of Mechanical Science & Engineering; and the Department of Computational Science & Engineering.

Also joining the AE Department in 2006, Bodony was named a Tau Beta Pi Eminent Engineer in 2012, and earned an NSF CAREER Award in Fluid Dynamics in the same year. He earned a bachelor’s and master’s in aeronautics and astronautics in 1997 and 1999, respectively, from Purdue University; and a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics in 2004 from Stanford University.

In addition to their excellent research contributions and leadership in their respective fields of expertise, both Bretl and Bodony are outstanding teachers. Bretl was named the 2013 Teacher of the Year by the local American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Bodony earned the same honor a year ago, as well as in 2008 and 2010.

Both Bretl and Bodony have been included regularly on the List of Teachers Ranked Excellent by Their Students, and both have earned the Engineering Council Award for Excellence in Advising.


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This story was published July 11, 2013.