The 6th International Conference on Reliable Engineering Computing (REC) was held on the Illinois Institute of Technology Main Campus from May 26-28, 2014. Supported by IIT Armour College of Engineering, this conference was organized and chaired by Dr. Mehdi Modares, Assistant Professor from Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering Department. This was the first year since 2008 that the conference has been in the United States.

With significant international contributions, the conference attracted attendees from multiple countries including Austria, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States.

The goal of REC2014 in Chicago was to cater to the growing global interest in Reliable Engineering Computing by focusing on providing solutions for reliability and computational issues in infrastructural systems. Conference attendees discussed the crucial need for design/decision making methodologies and protocols that will assure maintaining the safe and sustainable operation of infrastructures. These methods will assist practicing engineers to decide whether to repair or replace an infrastructure system.

Aiding in this discussion were three keynote speakers who shared their expertise in their fields with the conference attendees. Professor Achintya Haldar of the University of Arizona discussed “Engineering Computations of Large Infrastructures in the Presence of Uncertainty.” Professor Vladik Kreinovich from the University of Texas at El Paso shared his lecture “From Interval-Valued Probabilities to Interval-Valued Possibilities: Case Studies of Interval Computation Under Constraints.” Dr. Scott Ferson who works for Applied Biomathematics discussed “Handling the Elephant in the Room: Strategies to Address Model Uncertainty in Quantitative Analyses.”

Armour College of Engineering also sponsored the registration of five students: Joshua Bergerson (Ph.D. CAEE), Pegah Farshadmanesh (Ph.D. CAEE), Faezehossadat Khademi (M.S. CAEE), Nan Xiao (M.S. ECE), and Afshin Zahraee (Ph.D. CAEE). These students will lead a panel discussion later this year on campus about the topics presented at the conference in order to share their knowledge with others.

The 2016 REC conference will be held at the University of Bochum in Germany.