Our faculty specialize in three groups: Facilities, Rail and Systems.
Facilities
Imad Al-Qadi
Bliss Professor of Engineering
Al-Qadi’s expertise focuses on civil engineering and pavement materials, sustainability and life-cycle assessment, asphalt mixes and performance, polymerized asphalt rheology, pavement recycling optimization, highway and airfield pavement mechanics, advanced modeling, including viscoelastic response to tire loading, tire–pavement interaction, pavement fracture modeling and testing, interface and interlayer systems, nondestructive testing, infrastructure asset management systems and pavement condition assessment, preservation technologies, transportation infrastructure instrumentation and full-scale accelerated testing; autonomous and conceded vehicles and trucks, truck platooning, and forensic engineering and arbitration.
Ramez Hajj
Assistant Professor
Dr. Hajj’s research interests include chemical and mechanical characterization of asphalt binders and hot mix asphalt materials for flexible paving applications, flexible pavement design and maintenance, pavement preservation, novel material characterization techniques, computational modeling of infrastructure materials, mechanics of time-dependent materials, and smart and sustainable pavement construction and design practices.
Jeffrey R. Roesler
Ernest Barenberg Professor
Dr. Roesler’s research has focused on improving and developing structural design tools, characterizing concrete material fracture and fatigue properties under thermo-mechanical loading conditions, and predicting the behavior and capacity of ground-supported concrete slabs through numerical analyses and full-scale assessment. He has also studied cool pavements and their effect on the microscale urban heat island and how photocatalytic concrete can reduce the impact of urban air emissions on human health. More recently he has developed non-contact sensing systems for construction monitoring such as the concrete setting, sawcut timing, and curing effectiveness. He is currently developing passive sensing techniques with construction materials to help maneuver and guide autonomous vehicles to complement lane keeping functions of vehicles especially during adverse weather conditions.
Erol Tutumluer
Abel Bliss Professor in Engineering
Dr. Tutumluer specializes in Transportation Geotechnics with research interests in characterization of pavement and railroad geomaterials, i.e., subgrade soils and base/ballast unbound aggregates, soil/aggregate stabilization, geosynthetics, applications of artificial intelligence and deep learning, structural health monitoring of transportation facilities using sensors, modeling granular foundation systems using innovative techniques, sustainable use of foundation geomaterials and construction practices, discrete element analysis of ballast, dynamic response measurement and analyses of track systems, and mechanistic analysis and design.
Rail
Christopher P.L. Barkan
Professor
George Krambles Faculty Fellow
J. Riley Edwards
Senior Research Scientist and Senior Lecturer
Dr. Edwards’ research is focused on increasing the safety and efficiency of rail transportation facilities using innovative materials and methods. Specifically, his research focuses on the design and performance railway track superstructure and its component and the investigation of failure modes. His research scope includes varied forms of track infrastructure that are used for heavy axle load (HAL) freight railways, intercity and high speed passenger rail, and rail transit systems.
Systems
Rahim F. Benekohal
Professor
Dr. Benekohal’s research interests are in traffic flow modeling and simulation, traffic flow theory, intelligent
transportation systems (ITS) and connected and automated vehicles (CAV), traffic signal systems, traffic network
design, transportation systems evaluation, roadway capacity analysis, vehicle detection technologies, work zone
traffic management and safety, rail highway grade crossing safety, and transportation safety.
Eleftheria Kontou
Assistant Professor
Dr. Kontou’s research interests include sustainable transportation systems modeling, electric vehicles operations and their charging infrastructure management, emerging mobility services simulation, and transportation and energy systems interdepedencies and policies.
Lewis Lehe
Assistant Professor
Dr. Lehe studies urban travel from the perspective of transportation economics and traffic flow theory. His latest work includes topics such as congestion pricing, taxi driver earnings and bus stop spacings.
Hadi Meidani
Assistant Professor
Dr. Meidani’s research interests include scientific machine learning, uncertainty quantification, and developing fast and scalable computational modeling and AI methods for infrastructure engineering, reliability analysis of transportation networks under normal and extreme conditions, and optimal management of coupled infrastructure systems.
Yanfeng Ouyang
George Krambles Endowed Professor in Rail and Public Transit
Dr. Ouyang’s research mainly focuses on developing models to enhance efficiency, sustainability and resilience of transportation, logistics, and infrastructure systems, with special focus on addressing mobility challenges that arise in the transit, freight, military, energy, and agricultural industries.
Alireza Talebpour
Assistant Professor
Dr. Talebpour research focuses on human-automated vehicle interactions, traffic flow theory, reinforcement learning, and optimal control.