Louisiana State University, USA
Biography: Dr. Ishak, PE, is a Professor and Department Chair of Civil Engineering. Prior to joining UAH, he was a Professor of Civil Engineering at Louisiana State University for 16 years. He has over 25 years of experience in the field of transportation engineering with emphasis on intelligent transportation systems, traffic operation and control, traffic flow modeling and simulation, traffic safety, human factors and driving behavior, artificial intelligence and advanced computing applications in transportation, and the new emerging area of connected and automated vehicles. He has served as PI or Co-PI for over 35 federal and state funded projects and supervised 30 MS and PhD students to completion.
Dr. Ishak is also the founder of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) lab at Louisiana Transportation Research Center and the LSU driving simulator facility. The ITS lab serves as a data warehouse for real time traffic data and video feeds within the state of Louisiana, and provides support for various research projects that address the needs of the State of Louisiana. The driving simulator facility supports the safety research needs of Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development. Several research projects involving the simulator have been funded to study the factors affecting the cognitive tasks associated with driving, the vehicle performance under hurricane wind forces, effectiveness of different lane merge configurations in work zones, and the driving behavior associated with the emerging connected vehicles applications. In addition to the refereed journals and conference proceedings, the research findings received special attention from the media and were published in newspaper articles such as the LSU Reveille, the Advocate, etc. TV interviews were also broadcast on the weather channel, ABC, and NBC.
Since 2015, Dr. Ishak has served as the Chair of the Transportation Research Board Standing Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Computing Applications (ABJ70), which promotes and advances interdisciplinary research at the intersection of the fields of transportation engineering and computer science and information technology. Under his leadership, the committee has made great strides in terms of education, research, and outreach activities. In less than three years, the committee has tripled the number of sponsored/co-sponsored sessions at the TRB meeting and other TRB-sponsored events, established triennial strategic directions and annual action plans, and increased the number of reviewed papers from 22 in 2015 to 116 in 2017. Dr. Ishak is also a member of the five-year National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) panel for maintaining and executing a research agenda for the Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV) roadmap. Recent accomplishments include teaming with a consulting firm on a successful pursuit of a retainer contract for performing highly specialized and technically complex ITS system engineering and other support services.
Dr. Ishak served at LSU as the Undergraduate Civil Engineering Program Director for six years, and the Associate Dean for Academic Programs and Director of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Engineering Science program for two years. His extensive service record at LSU also included serving on the Faculty Senate, the Discover Advisory Board for undergraduate research, the Communication Across the Curriculum Advisory Council, the LSU Faculty Senate Master Planning Committee, the College Academic Matters Committee, the College Policy Committee, and other university, college, and departmental committees.
Dr. Ishak received the departmental annual Research Achievement Award and the LSU Tiger Athletic Foundation Teaching Award in 2015. In 2016, he completed the highly competitive and prestigious annual Southeastern Conference Academic Leadership Development Program in which four academic leaders were selected by the Provost to represent LSU. In his annual reviews by two successive deans, he was commended for demonstrating unwavering leadership of the academic programs and for managing through numerous administrative hurdles with care and perseverance, as well as navigating many challenges with minimal disruption.
Dr. Ishak is also a board member of the Gulf Region Intelligent Transportation Society and an associate editor for the Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering. Since joining UAH, Dr. Ishak has developed a partnership with Alabama Department of Transportation to establish a Regional Traffic Management Center for the North Alabama Region, which will be housed in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UAH.
Prof. Roberto Montemanni
Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IDSIA)&University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI), Switerland
Biography: Roberto Montemanni is professor of advanced algorithms at the University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland. He is also active as senior researcher at the Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence and as research advisor for PhD students at the University of Lugano, Switzerland. He obtained a Laurea degree in Computer Science from the University of Bologna, Italy in 1999 and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Glamorgan, UK in 2002. He is leading basic and applied research projects both at national and international levels. His main research interests are in the fields of mathematical modeling and algorithms, with applications in transportations and logistics.
Speech Title: SocialCar: Integrating Carpooling into Existing Mobility and Public Transportation Systems
Abstract: SocialCar is a European research and innovation project that seeks to incorporate carpooling (people commuting together on a same vehicle) into existing mobility and public transportation systems, by means of powerful planning algorithms and big data integration from public transportation, carpooling systems, and crowd sourcing. The project unites transportation engineers, social and economic scientists, information technology experts, carpoolers and public authorities from Italy, Greece, United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Poland, Switzerland, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, the Netherlands, Hungary, Spain and Belgium. Their mission is to design, develop, test and roll out a service that simplifies the travel experience of citizens in urban and peri-urban areas. SocialCar will define data processing flows and design algorithms to match travel requests with the integrated public-private transport supply, complemented by a reputation-based mechanism based on social media. After a general overview of the project, a detailed description of the route planning and ride matching engines at the basis of the system will be provided. These component are used to provide the users with meaningful alternatives for their trips.
Prof. Kananpha Amaruchkul
National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA), Bangkok, Thailand
Biography: Kananpha Amaruchkul is an Associate Professor of Graduate School of Applied Statistics, National Institute of Development Administration, Bangkok, Thailand. She graduated with PhD degree in Industrial Engineering, Minor Statistics from University of Minnesota, USA. She received M.S. degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from University of California, USA and A.B. degree in Mathematics (Honors) from Princeton University, Princeton, USA in 2001. She joined Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA as a Teaching Assistant in 2007. She served as a consultant for a couple of companies in Thailand, such as Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited, M-Focus, Ltd, etc. She is a referee for European Journal of Operational Research, Computers & Industrial Engineering and IEEE Transactions on Systems, etc. And an editor for Thai Operations Research journal.
Prof. Daniel(Jian) Sun
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Biography: Dr. Daniel Jian Sun is a professor and deputy chair of Department of Transportation and Shipping Logistics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He obtained his Ph.d in Transportation Research Center, University of Florida in 2009. His main research interests include urban driver behavior and simulation, urban transportation environment, Internet of Vehicles and urban traffic control. He has published more than 50 SCI/SSCI indexed journal papers, and has 24 papers accepted and presented in TRB annual meeting since 2010. He has been served in editorial committee board of several journals, including Journal of International Transportation (since 2012), Journal of Traffic and Transportation Engineering (English Version) (since 2014), and the chief member of road and traffic engineering sub-committee, Shanghai Society of Civil Engineering (since 2012). Moreover, he has been an Expert Reviewer for the Transportation Science & Technology Project, Ministry of Transport, China, and the National Science & Technology Award since 2014.
Speech Title: ANALYZING SPATIOTEMPORAL TRAFFIC LINE SOURCE EMISSIONS BASED ON MASSIVE DIDI CAR-HAILING DATA
Abstract: Nowadays, the massive car-hailing data has become a popular source for analyzing traffic operation and road congestion status, which unfortunately has seldom been extended to capture detailed on-road traffic emissions. This study aims to investigate the relationship between road traffic and the related built environment factors, as well as land use. The Computer Program to Calculate Emissions from Road Transport (COPERT) model from European Environment Agency (EEA) was introduced estimate the 24-hour NOx emission pattern of road segments with the parameters extracted from Didi massive trajectory data. Then, the temporal Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) Clusteringwas used to classify road segments based on the 24-hour emission rates, while Geographical Detector and MORAN’s I were introduced to verify the impact of built environment on line source emissions and similarity of nearby road segments. The spatial autoregressive moving average (SARMA) regression model was incorporated to assess the impact of selected built environment factors on emission rate based on the probabilistic results from FCM. It was found that the short road segments, being close to city center, with high density of bus stations, ramp nearby and high proportion of residential or commercial land would substantially increase the emission rate. Finally, the 24-hour atmospheric NO2 concentrations were obtained from the environmental monitor stations, to calculate the time variational trend by comparing with the line source traffic emissions, which to some extent explains the contribution of on-road traffic to the overall atmospheric pollution. Result of this study could guide urban planning, so as to avoid transportation related built environment attributes which may contribute to serious atmospheric environment pollutions.
Prof. Khair S. Jadaan
University of Jordan, Jordan
Biography: Dr Khair Jadaan is a Professor of Transportation Engineering at the University of Jordan. He has over 48 years of academic and consultancy experience in various developed and developing countries including UK (where he earned two postgraduate degrees), USA, Germany, New Zealand, Kuwait, Iraq and Jordan. Khair taught several undergraduate and postgraduate transportation engineering courses and supervised many theses. His main research interests are road safety, environmental impacts of transport and road pricing (many with applications to developing countries). He has published over 160 scientific papers in international Journals and conferences and is a member of the Editorial Board of three international journals.
Prof Jadaan has over 30 years of teaching and research experience at Universities of Leeds (England), Bradford (England), California Berkeley and UOI at Urbana-Champaign (USA), Canterbury and Auckland (New Zealand), Baghdad (Iraq), Kuwait, Univ. of Jordan, and Al-Isra (Private University / Jordan) in addition to 12 years as a Senior Advisor with the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development (AFESD).
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