Presenter Bios

I am from Colombia. I have a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering. I have mostly worked on highway and utility services design and construction projects as a resident engineer and project manager assistant. I have been here in the United States since the spring of 2020, my main goal was to improve my English skills. I have been studying an MSc in Construction Management at East Carolina University since the fall of 2021, currently in my last semester. I have worked as a Research Assistant using UAS for different purposes.

Emmnauel is a member of the Prof. Daniels research group working on Engineered Water Repellency (EWR). He is a research assistant in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Emmanuel’s research is supported  National Science Foundation and the Iowa Research Highway Board. His focus is field application of EWR in construction especially in rural gravelly roads. Emmanuel is the current Vice President of the Graduate & Professional Student Government  at UNCC.

Denise is a Graduate Research Assistant in the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and pursuing her PhD in the Infrastructure and Environmental Systems (INES) program. She completed her Bachelor of Science in Construction Management in 2017 at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and her Master of Science in Construction Science and Management (MSCSM) with emphasis on Sustainability from Clemson University in 2019.  Her research interests are currently focused on the impact of contaminants from urban and agricultural applications into surface waters. In her free time, Denise enjoys reading, drawing, crocheting, and travelling.

Gazali Agboola is an applied science and technology doctoral student and a research assistant at North Carolina A&T State University. His interests are data science and analytics, geospatial data analysis, and the application of remote sensing. His current research area is landslide monitoring and change detection using remotely sensed data and his advisor is Dr. Leila Hashemi Beni. He loves adventure and playing chess.

Ishtiak Ahmed is working as a Research Associate at Institute for Transportation Research and Education. He graduated from North Carolina State University with a masters and PhD degree in Civil Engineering. He completed his bachelor degree in Civil Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.

Maria Aparicio was born in Medellin, Colombia, in 1997. During her undergraduate years, Maria became interested in asphalt materials research. Following graduation, she worked in the industry for two years and later decided to pursue graduate studies at NC State University with Dr. Cassie Castorena.

Dr. Eleni Bardaka is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University. Her work focuses on two main research areas: (i) the study of causal social and economic impacts of transportation investments and policies; and (ii) the analysis of aggregate and individual travel demand, preferences, and needs related to public transit, microtransit, and micromobility. Dr. Bardaka holds a Ph.D. and M.S. degree in Transportation Engineering and an M.S. degree in Economics from Purdue University. She earned a five-year diploma in Civil Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens in Greece

I am Salman Bashit. I am doing my master's at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and my major is Geoscience with a geospatial science concentration. I am doing my research on “Creating Practicability Envelopes for UAS Topo bathymetric LiDAR Collections in Coastal Regions”. Also, I am working as a research assistant for Socio-Environmental Analysis Lab (SEAL), Earth and Ocean Sciences department led by Professor Dr. Narcisa Pricope.  Currently, I am working on a project funded by the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT).

Steve Bert is a Senior Economist at the Institute for Transportation Research and Education at NC State University and an Economic Consultant for Planning Communities, LLC. His research focuses on the valuation of market and non-market impacts that stem from transportation investments, policies, and initiatives. He takes an active role in professional service activities in the industry serving as the Communications Coordinator for the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Standing Committee on Economic Development and Land Use (AMS50)

Matthew Bhagat-Conway is an Assistant Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning. His research interests are in travel behavior, urban transportation, and statistical methods for transportation data analysis. He is also jointly appointed in the Odum Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, where he is available to assist researchers with statistics and data analysis. Dr. Bhagat-Conway has a PhD and MA in Geography from Arizona State University, and a BA in Geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to graduate school, he was a software developer and project manager for Conveyal, a public transport planning consulting firm, and a fellow in the Data Science for Social Good fellowship at the University of Chicago.

Minerva Bonilla is a Ph.D. candidate from the Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering program at North Carolina State University.  Her research is with focuses on both Construction and Transportation Engineering.  Bonilla has worked on 3 research funded by NCDOT in areas of constructability, modern unconventional intersections and interchanges, and funding for transportation infrastructure.  Her current research efforts are related to the identification of construction issues affecting Alternative Intersections and Interchanges.

Dr. Brock is a certified planner with 15 years of experience that includes transportation policy, multimodal planning, environmental planning and economic development research.  He is a Senior Research Scholar at ITRE with a passion for equity, resiliency and human-scale mobility. His expertise in the planning process is informed by his experience in applied transportation research, public sector planning and private sector consulting.

Ryan Brumfield is currently the Director of NCDOT’s Integrated Mobility Division.  Ryan was previously the Senior Transportation Advisor for the Appalachian Regional Commission where he led efforts to improve transportation access opportunities and services for Appalachian residents and businesses. Prior to his work with ARC, Ryan was with the Federal Highway Administration for seven years, most recently as the national manager of the TIGER (recently BUILD, now RAISE) discretionary grant program. Ryan has bachelors and master’s degrees in civil engineering from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and is a registered professional engineer.

Esdras Carbajal is a Research Scientist and PhD student in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at North Carolina State University. She obtained M.S. degrees in Plant Breeding and Genetics from NC State University. He is currently the field and greenhouse manager for the Turfgrass Breeding and Genetics Program at NC State while working towards a PhD degree in Plant Breeding and Genetics.

Cassie Castorena is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on the characterization and design of asphalt binders and mixtures.

I am a Ph.D. student at UNC-Charlotte focusing on impact modelling to prestressed concrete girders.

Dr. Cavalline is an Associate Professor at UNC Charlotte.  She and her team perform research on cementitious materials, concrete recycling, quality assurance, asset management for pavements and bridges, and forensic engineering.  Engaged in research to support NCDOT for about 15 years, her team has completed and active projects in the areas of bridges, pavements, and asset management.  She serves as a Chair of TRB’s Transportation Infrastructure Group and on several TRB committees, as well as on several ACI committees.  She is a member of several NCHRP panels and FHWA’s EDC-6 Targeted Overlay Pavement Solutions Team.

Hyunjun Choi received his BS and MS degrees in architectural engineering from Hanyang University in South Korea in 2016 and 2018, respectively. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University (NCSU) under the supervision of Dr. Pourghaz. His area of specialization is mass transport and corrosion. He is collaborating with the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) on the project "Integration of Repair and Remediation Methods into Pipe Material Selection Approach" and conducting research on mass transport in wood structures.

Dr. Combs studies transport and land use planning, the built environment-travel behavior connection, equity impacts of new mobility innovations, and transport planning in developing contexts, with a particular focus on social and environmental impacts of transport policies. Her overarching research goals are to expand our knowledge of the environmental determinants of travel behavior and vehicle use, and to apply that knowledge to support efforts of decision-makers to create more sustainable, healthy, socially just communities.

Rafaella Costa is a Ph.D. student at NC State University. She is currently working on developing a practical method to quantify RAP binder availability from sieve analysis. She received her M.S. degree from the University of Nevada-Reno.

Chris is the Associate Director for Research at ITRE.  His passion for alternative intersections started as a graduate student under Dr. Joe Hummer and has continued on in various capacities throughout his career.  Most recently, his areas in alternative design are focus on safety and use cases for urban revitalization.

Tanmay Das is a PhD student in NC State's Civil Construction and Environmental Engineering department. He researches autonomous vehicle safety and mobility. Tanmay is experienced in data cleaning, analysis, microsimulation, and writing technical reports.  He now works as a graduate researcher on projects funded by USDOT,  and NCDOT. His peer-reviewed publications and conference proceedings number more than a dozen.   Mr. Das is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and a friend of the TRB Subcommittee on Connected and Automated Traffic Flow. He likes problem-solving, critical thinking, and group work.

I was born in Lincoln, NE where I completed my undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the Spring of 2022. There, I worked as an undergraduate research assistant under a facility member who was studying the demolition/collapse of a 17-story dormitory on campus and also performed/analyzed a LiDAR scan of a local cave (Robber’s Cave) for preservation purposes. My research interests focus on the design of structures for natural disasters, specifically earthquake engineering and the seismic design of bridges.

Nastasha has worked in transportation for over 10 years. Her expertise is in multimodal corridor planning, transportation planning, freight plan, climate change resilience, and policies.

Dr. Youngseob Eum is a postdoctoral research associate in the department of city and regional planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, after receiving his Ph.D. in Geography from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His past research has developed statistical and computational methods to investigate human mobility pattern changes associated with individual health status. He is currently working on a research project that explores the impact of recent changes in Medicaid on the public transit systems and Medicaid beneficiaries’ access to health care.

Adams Familusi is currently a Graduate student at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Prior to resuming his graduate studies, he had over two years of industry exposure with the Geotechnical Engineering department of Arup Nigeria. He intends to learn and apply laboratory, field, and computational skills to understand and predict engineering challenges on pavements and similar infrastructures with the aim to optimize design methods and reduce construction/maintenance costs.

Dr. Wei (David) Fan currently serves as a full professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the Director of the USDOT University Transportation Center for Advanced Multimodal Mobility Solutions and Education. He is also a thrust leader/associate director of the NC Transportation Center of Excellence on Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Technology (NC-CAV). Dr. Fan serves as the Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology, a handling editor of TRR, an associate editor of IEEE Transactions – ITS and ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems.

Tewodros Gebre is a Ph.D. student in the Applied Science and Technology program with a passion for uncovering innovative solutions for transportation-related applications through the integration of Artificial Intelligence and Remote Sensing Technologies with Road Transportation Systems. He has a strong educational background, having earned his BS in Hydraulic Engineering from Arba Minch University in 2009, followed by his MS in Transport Engineering from Addis Ababa University in 2016.

I'm Boris Goenaga, a Ph.D. candidate at NCSU. My research focuses on improving how engineers manage the structural and frictional performance of pavements. This management process has long-lasting impacts on the total transportation system and its economic, environmental, and social dimensions. My research goal is to find a relationship between the most common pavement indices used in a Pavement Management System (PMS) with highway safety and accounts for safety performance in the PMS decision-making.

Dr. Hajbabaie has is an associate professor at NC State University. He served as the Secretary of Work Zone Traffic Control committee of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) from 2014 to 2019 and as the Chair of the Asset Management Subcommittee. Dr. Hajbabaie’s activities contribute to the advancement of real-time optimization of large-scale complex engineering systems represented by models with a high degree of realism. He is an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems. He is the recipient of the Goodnight Early Career Innovator at NC State and the junior outstanding researcher at Washington State University.

Ryan Hassett is an economist at the Institute for Transportation Research and Education at NC State University, where he recently helped lead the NCDOT Division of Aviation's biennial State of Aviation economic impact study.

John Hildreth is the Kimmel Distinguished Professor of Construction Management at Western Carolina University.  His research interests focus on transportation asset management, construction equipment management, and production planning.  He has completed research projects related to the effective and efficient management of capital-intensive transportation assets and mobile heavy equipment.  He is the academic advisor to the Association of Construction Equipment Managers (ACEM) and active member of the Transportation Research Board (TRB).  He holds civil engineering degrees (BS and MS) from West Virginia University and a PhD from Virginia Tech.

Chengying Hua is a second-year graduate student.

Jonathon Huber is a senior Aviation Science student at Elizabeth City State University, studying Unmanned Aircraft Systems. He has been awarded the Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Research Fellowship for 2023 and is currently researching the sound levels produced by drones flying overhead. Jonathon is passionate about developing advanced solutions for future air and space mobility.

A transportation engineering graduate student with experience and skill in solving transportation problems. I have experience in highway traffic data collection, data analysis, traffic engineering, traffic safety, transportation planning, highway geometric design, transportation modelling, geo-spatial analysis, and statistics. Also, have hands-on experience for preparing successful project proposals for multi-disciplinary engineering projects. At this moment, working on identifying innovative ways to resolve railway trespassing related accidents. In addition, also researching on identifying safety effects of a mixed driving environment containing both human-driven vehicles and driverless connected and autonomous vehicles in highway construction work zones.

I am a final year Ph.D. student in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at North Carolina State University. My current research focuses on the post-construction urban soil erosion control and stormwater infiltration using compost incorporation and grass/wildflowers establishment, along with the combined use of UAVs, ArcGIS and R Software. Earlier, I completed my BS in Soil, Water and Environment and MS in Environmental Science from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. My research interests include Soil Erosion Control, Stormwater Infiltration, Soil Health Management, Soil Compaction, and ArcGIS-Data Science.

Arnav Jhala is an associate professor of computer science at NC State University's Department of Computer Science. He also directs the Visual Narrative interdisciplinary faculty cluster.  Jhala’s research group investigates cognitive models of narrative comprehension, narrative generation, and computational creativity. The group utilizes computational modeling and analysis techniques for textual, visual, and interaction data.

Currently, the presenter is pursuing her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at North Carolina State University and is also completing her master's degree in Statistics. She is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology with a master's degree in transportation. The presenter's current research deals with probabilistically deciding the frequency of pavement distress data collection based on parameters like pavement deterioration, construction, rehabilitation, and extreme events history using Bayesian inference techniques in prediction models. The goal of this research is to optimize the frequency of data collection to provide NCDOT with all the necessary information to make effective decisions.

I am a second year PhD student at University of North Carolina Charlotte in Civil and environmental engineering. I work on stormwater treatment.

MUBBASHAR ALTAF KHAN completed his Ph.D. degree in engineering from the University of Toledo, in 2018. He is currently Post-doctoral Research Scholar with the NC-CAV Center of Excellence on Advanced Transportation, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. In the past, he worked as an Assistant Professor with the Mirpur University of Science and Technology, Pakistan. His research interests include cognitive radios, QoS and secondary radio spectrum, autonomous systems, connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), fuzzy logic and fuzzy systems, testing and evaluation of autonomous systems, human-machine collaboration and trust modeling for machines, and machine learning algorithms.

Christina Kranz is a Lecturer in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at North Carolina State University. She teaches the introduction soil science class as well as contributes to research at NC State's Sediment and Erosion Control Facility. Her work focuses on sediment and erosion control, water quality, and stormwater management in post-construction soils.

Dr. Wes Kumfer is an engineering research associate at the UNC Highway Safety Research Center with a focus on crash analysis and workforce development. His primary research interest is traffic safety management through a system-oriented approach. While at HSRC, Dr. Kumfer has worked on pedestrian crash modeling, Safe System implementation, and engineering evaluation. He uses this experience as a member of the Road to Zero Coalition steering group and as an instructor for HSRC’s Road Safety Academy.

Dr. Kevin Kupietz, is the Chair Person for the Elizabeth City State University (ECSU) Department of Aviation and Emergency Management. He is a NC certified Firefighter/Paramedic with over twenty years of emergency response experience with local, state, and federal agencies. He comes with a diverse emergency response and educational background with teaching certifications in a variety of emergency service topics. He has been in Emergency services higher education for more than twenty years teaching initial courses for job certifications, specialized fire/rescue classes as well as graduate and under-graduate programs, literally having taught thousands of students.

Dr. Jinkun Lee is an assistant professor at East Carolina University. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Seoul National University in 1997 and 1999 and his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering/Operations Research from Penn State in 2014. Dr. Lee’s current work focuses on autonomous vehicle model optimization based on transportation network simulation.

Dr. Rongfang (Rachel) Liu has extensive experience in the area of intermodal transportation planning and engineering, environmental impact and major investment studies, and travel demand forecasting and simulation modeling. She has managed/conducted long-range transportation plans for different federal, state, and local government agencies and developed traffic engineering designs for various public and private sector clients. She has gained this broad-based experience through her various positions with consulting firms, research institutes, and government agencies as well as her extensive involvement with Transportation Research Board committees and modeling development task forces. She joined A&T in 2021 after 20 years at NJIT.

Yajie Liu is a Ph.D. student (research & teaching assistant) in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University. She received an MS in Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a BA in Construction Management at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, a BE in Building Environment and Energy Engineering at the China University of Mining and Technology.  Her research focuses on utilizing Advanced Technologies in Infrastructure Engineering, including unmanned aerial systems-based photogrammetric surveying and mapping and laser scanner and LiDAR surveying and mapping.

Yunmei Liu is currently the Ph.D. candidate of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Florida (UF). Prior to joining UF, Yunmei completed her master’s degree through Nanjing University in 2019. Yunmei has worked as a research assistant during her PhD study with support from several state and Federal grants, including NC DOT and NSF projects. Some of her specific research interests include: modeling human-automation interaction and human performance; addressing human factors in surface transportation; improving assistive technology design and predicting human cognitive or physical states.

Narges Matini is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree under supervision of Dr. Underwood in Pavement Engineering at North Carolina State University. It became her passion to find approaches to design and maintain resilient transportation infrastructures. She has spent the last four years learning about the resiliency concept and the effect of extreme events on transportation infrastructures.

Jose Matute has a background in automated driving with a focus on motion planning and control. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering (2008) and a Magister in Mechanical Engineering (2011) from Simon Bolivar University (Venezuela) before joining the Department of Mechanics where he worked as an Assistant Professor. Later, he completed his PhD in Control Engineering (2021) at the University of the Basque Country (Spain), while he was working as a Senior Researcher at Tecnalia R&I. Since 2022 he has been working at North Carolina A&T State University in the ACCESS Lab where he is now a Research Associate

Rich McLaughlin has been a professor in the Soil Science and now Crop and Soil Sciences department at North Carolina for more than 30 years.  His primary goal has been to improve and protect water quality in North Carolina and beyond by changing behavior and practices which could degrade our waters.  For the last two decades, he has focused on reducing the impact of development on water quality during active construction.

Sarah O’Brien joined HSRC in 2018 and has 20 years of experience in non-motorized transportation research, planning and design, policy, and education.  Her primary focus is conducting research and providing technical assistance to practitioners to improve walking and bicycling within communities.  She volunteers with various TRB committees and panels and has been a member of APBP since 2010. Sarah has a Master of Environmental Science and Management from the UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School.  Her undergraduate degree in Biology is from UNC-Asheville.  She lives in Durham, NC with her family.

Dr. Okan Pala is a Senior Research Scientist at the Computer Science Department where he also teaches programming. He also is an Affiliate Faculty at the CGA. He earned his PhD in “Software and Information Systems” from UNCC’s College of Computing and received his MSc degree from NC State’s Center for Geospatial Analytics. Dr. Pala has federal government work experience with the USEPA, USNPS, Los Alamos National Laboratory as well as industry experience with Lockheed Martin and CS Corporation.

Venktesh Pandey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina A&T State University. His research integrates intelligent transportation systems and emerging mobility services in traffic operations, congestion pricing, and transportation planning models with a focus on sustainability. Venktesh is active with various professional organizations such as Transportation Research Board (TRB), Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), and the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS) and serves as the faculty advisor for the ITE student chapter at NCA&T.

Janaki Patel is the CLEAR Program Manager in the Value Management Office at NCDOT.  She has a civil engineering degree from NC State University and has 10 years of engineering experience starting on NCDOT's rotational training program, in the Hydraulics Unit, at SEPI Engineering, and most recently in her role as a Value Management Engineer.

Jaime Preciado was born in Cartagena, Colombia in 1996. During his undergraduate years, Jaime became interested in asphalt materials research. Following graduation, he worked in industry for two years and after that decided to pursue graduate studies at NC State University with Dr. Shane Underwood.

Giorgio T. Proestos is an Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University. He received his BASc in Engineering Science and PhD from the University of Toronto, in 2012 and 2018, respectively. He is the Secretary of Joint ACI-ASCE Committee 445, Shear and Torsion, and a member of Joint ACI-ASCE Subcommittee 445-E, Shear & Torsion-Torsion. He received the ACI Chester Paul Siess Award for Excellence in Structural Research in 2018 and the ACI Design Award in 2017. Dr. Proestos’ research focusses on the shear response of concrete members, including methods to directly assess the safety of members from cracks.

Dr. Nagui Rouphail currently serves as Senior Principal Engineer at Kittelson and Associates, Inc.  He also holds the title of Distinguished University Professor Emeritus from NC State University. Dr, Rouphail spent 40 years in academia, and is an international expert in the field of highway capacity, traffic operations and simulation and vehicle emissions. He has published over 200 refereed journal publications and had graduated over 80 Maters and PhD students during his academic career. He also served as PI or Co-PI on multiple national, state and local transportation research projects.

Mike has 31 years of experience and leads Stantec’s Nationwide Complete Streets program and specializes in sustainable transportation and implementing innovative techniques for analysis and outreach. These techniques include Block by Block Assessment Tool, stormwater BMPs, Vision Zero safety studies, lighting analysis, urban trail systems, road diets, MMLOS analysis and street typologies. Mike is a Board Member on the National Complete Streets Coalition and a certified Complete Streets Trainer for the Smart Growth America and has managed more than 40 Complete Streets corridor studies.  He routinely leads multiday design charrettes.

Sepehr Sabeti is a PhD candidate at UNC Charlotte. During his PhD studies, Sepehr joined ServiceNow Research for an internship with the AI platform team, and later joined Leidos Surface Transportation Portfolio in the Civil Group for another internship. Sepehr received a MSc in Computer Science from UNC Charlotte in 2022 and another MSc in Civil Engineering from Iran University of Science in Technology (IUST) in 2018. Sepehr's main research interests lie at the intersection of infrastructure asset management and maintenance, augmented reality, virtual reality and data analytics.

Dr. Samandar is a research scholar at ITRE. He earned both master's and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering from NC State University on a Fulbright Scholarship. Prior to joining NC State, he worked on behalf of the Army Corps of Engineers for 3 years. Dr. Samandar is interested in intelligent transportation systems, travel time reliability, traffic simulation, and connected-autonomous vehicle research.

Dr. Yunesh Saulick is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC). Before joining UNCC, Yunesh was a postdoc at The University of Hong Kong where he also obtained his doctorate in 2018. Yunesh’s current work aims at investigating the mechanisms of frost heaving on ground infrastructure and mitigating the resulting detrimental effects by transforming frost susceptible soils into frost resistant soils. In addition to experimental investigations, his research entails developing numerical models for simulating related processes.

Adam Schmidt is a third-year Ph.D. Student in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University, where his research focuses on the social and economic impacts of public transportation projects. He is advised by Dr. Eleni Bardaka. He completed his Bachelor of Science in civil engineering at NC State University and previously interned for Kimley-Horn and Associates in Raleigh. Adam has twice been named a USDOT Eisenhower Graduate Transportation Fellow, selected from a national applicant pool by the Federal Highway Administration for his research and leadership potential in the transportation industry.

Soumya Sharma is a Ph.D. candidate at NC State University with research interests in studying transportation impacts of AV, CAV truck-related impacts on the macro and micro levels. When not working, I enjoy kayaking, hiking, swimming, and playing board games.

Daniel is a graduate student at the department of Sustainable Technology and the Built Environment.

On March 30, 2003, Etavian Monte Laurence Stokes was born. He attends Elizabeth City State University and studies Aviation. He founded the clothing company Foreign Object. He is also the Co-Founder of Four The Thrill, an artist marketing firm.

Xiuhu Sun is a current Master's student in Electrical Engineering at UNC-Charlotte. He worked in the electric power system from 2002 to 2014 and in the automotive field from 2014 to 2021. His primary research interest lies in power transfer in transportation systems, and he is currently working on wireless power transfer for railway applications.

Micheal "Mike" Uduebor is an academic with a love for research. He is currently a graduate (Ph.D.) research student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His research focuses on mitigating the challenges of frost action using engineered water repellency on a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded project. He has spent the last decade working on deep foundations, pavement substructures, small dams, hydrocarbon contamination remediation, and landfill emission mitigation.

Dr. Shane Underwood is a Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University. His research focuses on developing improved pavement systems through experimental mechanical studies of paving materials and through studies to understand the vulnerability of these system’s to climate and technology uncertainties. His work has been published in more than 115 peer reviewed journal papers and he has spoken at various national and international venues on topics related to pavements, paving materials, and infrastructure resilience.

Mike Wallace is a graduate student in the Department of Environmental, Earth and Geospatial Sciences.  He earned his undergraduate degree from Guilford College.  This presentation is the culmination of work being performed for the NCDOT Research Grant Program.

Ellen is the injury prevention program coordinator for the Eastern Carolina Injury Prevention Program at ECU Health in Greenville, North Carolina since 2006.  She has presented at  Lifesavers Highway Safety conference, Safe States conference, Governor’s Highway Safety Traffic Safety Expo, North Carolina Bike Walk Summit, Safe Kids Worldwide PREVCON conference, NCSITE conference, and Safe Kids North Carolina conference.  Ellen has written and managed over 2 million dollars in external funds for community child safety grants. Ellen has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Salem College and a Master of Social Work degree from Florida State University.

Morgan earned her B.S. in Civil Engineering from NCSU and completed an M.S. in Architectural Engineering with an emphasis on Construction Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder.  She worked professionally in the construction industry before returning to NCSU for a Ph.D. under the direction of Dr. William Rasdorf that focuses on public policy and transportation infrastructure sustainability in support of healthy rural and urban communities.  She seeks ways to improve our national infrastructure to serve the needs of our growing population.  Morgan is a recipient of NCSU’s Provost Doctoral Fellowship.

Artur Wolek is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UNC Charlotte. His research is in the design of motion planning, control, and estimation algorithms for unmanned atmospheric and ocean vehicles. A unifying theme of his research is the coupling of estimation and control to enable individual robots and teams of robots to actively exploit their sensing performance and platform dynamics.

Dr. Guangchuan Yang is a research associate at the Institute for Transportation Research and Education at North Carolina State University. He received his M.S. degree in Transportation Planning and Engineering from University of Southampton, UK, and the Ph.D. degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Nevada, Reno. His main areas of research include traffic operational modeling, driver behavior analysis, and transportation planning for connected and autonomous vehicles. He serves as an editorial board member for the Journal of “Case Studies on Transport Policies”, “International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology”, and “Transportation Safety and Environmental”.

I am a second-year PhD student at UNC Charlotte, with a major in transportation.

Alexander Yoshizumi is a PhD candidate at NC State University’s Center for Geospatial Analytics and serves as the executive director of the Applied Data Research Institute. In his time as a researcher, he has worked alongside a wide array of public and private organizations to tackle questions related to energy system reliability, transportation electrification, resilience planning, and more. With expertise in systems modeling and geospatial analytics, Alexander's current research centers around the interplay between energy, transportation, and land-use change.

Dr. Tiefu Zhao is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and Associate of Energy Production and Infrastructure Center (EPIC). Dr. Zhao came to UNC Charlotte with industry R&D experience in power electronics and power management at Eaton Corporate Research and Technology. He received his B.S. and M.S degrees from Tsinghua University, China and Ph.D. degree from North Carolina State University. Dr. Zhao is internationally recognized as the recipient of 2015 IEEE Industry Application Society (IAS) Andrew W. Smith Outstanding Young Member Award and 2015 STEM Forward Young Engineer of the Year Award for his outstanding achievement and contributions to the power electronics engineering profession. He will be conducting research in the areas of Grid Edge Power Electronics, Solid State Transformer, Solid State Circuit Protection, DC Distribution, Microgrid, Renewable Energy Integration, and Wide Bandgap Device Applications.

Dr. Lei Zhu is an Assistant Professor of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Before joining UNC Charlotte, he served as an Advanced Transportation Researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), focusing on sustainable and advanced transportation systems. Dr. Zhu is an expert on next-generation transportation systems in smart cities, with broad research interests including human mobility modeling and analysis (Wi-Fi, GPS, etc.), intelligent and sustainable mobility and micro-mobility, and infrastructure perception and control. He is a member of the TRB GIS committee (AED40), Senior member of IEEE, and ASCE.