People

Gus is a part-time student at Texas A&M University. He is researching the use of machine learning to identify typical bridge components from a point cloud. He has a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M, and is currently working toward a M.S. in Civil Engineering. He is also employed at Freese and Nichols, Inc., where he has several months of experience as an EIT. 

Email: gus.herbrich@tamu.edu 

Chang is a Ph.D. student and her research leverages multi-sensor fusion of inertial measurement units and computer vision data to develop high-accuracy, cost-effective methods for railway track geometry estimation. She holds dual M.S. degrees in Engineering Science as well as Computational Science & Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, and earned a B.S. in Engineering Mechanics from Jinan University. 

Email: changliu3@tamu.edu  

Ali is Ph.D. student in Civil Engineering at Texas A&M University. He earned both his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil and Structural Engineering from the University of Tehran, Iran. During his master’s studies, Ali conducted experimental research in structural health monitoring on a half-scale truss bridge using machine learning techniques and sensor data. He has published one journal article based on this work. His current research focuses on bridge engineering technologies, contributing to a national project funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The project aims to develop a comprehensive website to gather, evaluate, and host advanced bridge technologies. In addition to his research activities, Ali serves as an officer of the Structural Engineers Association of Texas (SEAoT) student chapter at Texas A&M University. His broader research interests include bridge management, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, large language models, and structural health monitoring. In his free time, Ali enjoys reading, hiking, and playing soccer and volleyball.

Email: ali.mo1377@tamu.edu 

Scott is a Ph.D. student in the Data Science and AI track. He received his bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering with a focus in Structural Engineering from Texas A&M in 2023. His research focuses on evacuation planning for large urban areas by utilizing both physics-based and statistical methodologies. He has also participated in projects related to AI applications in civil engineering and robotic drone design. He has completed two internships at the Alliance Transportation Group, where he was exposed to transportation engineering and machine learning. 

Email: northedge.scott@tamu.edu 

Alireza is a Ph.D. student and primary researcher on multiple projects. His current works includes modeling wildfire spread across large landscapes and investigating the effects of fire on bridge structures. He also leads research on impact modeling and real-time hybrid simulation, utilizing shake table experiments. During his Master’s studies, he focused on damage diagnosis of bridges using Kalman Filter methods. Before starting his Ph.D., he worked in structural design and retrofitting in his home country.  

Email: alireza_sadegh97@tamu.edu  

Nida Virabalin is currently an M.S. student at Texas A&M University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently researching the impact of flood debris on bridges using both computational and experimental methods. She has had internships at BakerRisk, SpaceX, and Wiss, Janey, Elstner Associates that have introduced her to dynamic loading and analysis. 

Email: nvirabalin@tamu.edu 

Prashank is a Ph.D. student and is currently working on the Advanced Bridge Technology Clearinghouse (ABTC) Project, where he is developing a technology evaluation platform using a semi-autonomous approach. Prashank earned his M.Tech in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India. His master’s research focused on developing an approximate model of the Pantograph–Overhead Equipment (OHE) overlap section using finite element model (FEM) updating. He completed his B.Tech in Civil Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati, India. His undergraduate research focused on structural health monitoring (SHM) using wave theory, and he contributed to the publication “Impact Induced Solitary Wave Propagation through Woodpile Structure, Smart Materials and Structures”.  He also participated in an autonomous bot competition and developed a keen interest in macroeconomics. Outside of his academic pursuits, Prashank enjoys hiking and studying international relations.

Email: prashank@tamu.edu