2026
March 2026: Amir Hossein Oliaee presented his research proposal and received the Best Doctoral Forum Presentation Award at the Doctoral Forum of the ASCE Construction Research Congress (CRC) in San Antonio, Texas. Congratulations, Amir!
March 2026: Yilin Cai presented research on a automated building envelope retrofitting application case at the ASCE Construction Research Congress (CRC) in San Antonio, TX.
March 2026: Rafay Ali presented research on a automated MEP drawing analysis framework using computer vision preprocessing and vision langualge models at the ASCE Construction Research Congress (CRC) in San Antonio, TX.
March 2026: Sharjeel Anjum presented research on a physical fatigue monitoring framework of construction workers using edge-based machine learning and wearable sensors at the ASCE Construction Research Congress (CRC) in San Antonio, TX.
January 2026: Awarded the Scholarly Excellence Award - Early Career by the College of Architecture.
January 2026: Serving as Poster Session Co-chair and Organizing Committee member for ACM BuildSys in Banff, Canada
January 2026: Serving as Poster Session Co-chair and Organizing Committee member for the ASCE Construction Research Congress (CRC) in San Antonio, TX.
January 2026: Serving as Track Co-chair for the International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering (i3CE) in South Korea.
2025
December 2025: First PhD student from HIBE lab, Hussein Al Jebai graduates. Congratulations Hussein!
December 2025: Hussein Al Jebaei successfully defended his Ph.D. in Construction Science, completing his research on the co-optimization of comfort and energy in buildings.
November 2025: Co-organized the 2nd ADIF Industry Workshop at TAMU, driving asset data and systems interoperability.
October 2025: Received the Montague - Center for Teaching Excellence Award.
October 2025: Dr. Aryal was as a panelist on how AI is transforming research and teaching at the COA showcase.
October 2025: Dr. Aryal presented on how to scale offsite construction for disaster recovery during the COA showcase.
September 2025: Joined the College of Architecture Research Council AI Task Force.
June 2025: Dr. Aryal presented research on a real-time multimodal sensing system for 3D printed construction at the International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction (ISARC) in Montreal, Canada.
May 2025: The HIBE lab secured a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Convergence Accelerator Track M for the TANDEM project, focusing on tensegrity-based assistive exosuits (PI: Dr. Chuma Nnaji; Co-PIs: Dr. Ashrant Aryal, Dr. Jay Kim).
June 2026: Appointed as Faculty Advisor for the Nepalese Student Association (NSA) at TAMU.
May 2025: Awarded an internal grant from the Construction Industry Advisory Council (CIAC) for the VISIT-MR mixed reality training project (PI: Dr. Gilles Albeaino; Co-PIs: Dr. Ashrant Aryal, Jonathan Houston).
January 2025: Received the Teaching Excellence Award - Early Career from the College of Architecture.
2024
December 2024: Secured a grant from CIAC to develop an AI-driven immersive platform for advancing cultural competency in construction (PI: Dr. Minerva Bonilla; Co-PIs: Dr. Ashrant Aryal, Dr. Chuma Nnaji).
September 2024: Secured a grant for the Disaster Recovery Alternative Housing Study (PI: Dr. Julie Hartell; Co-PIs: Dr. Ashrant Aryal, Dr. Peter Keating, Dr. Petros Sideris).
September 2024: Secured a grant from the Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement (KAIA) for digital twin-based semantic interoperability technology (PI: Dr. David Jeong; Co-PI: Dr. Ashrant Aryal).
September 2024: Awarded funding by the TAMIDS Early Career Collaboration Program to develop an energy digital twin of the TAMU campus (PI: Dr. Ashrant Aryal; Co-PI: Dr. Xinyue Ye).
August 2024: Appointed as Associate Editor for the journal Urbanization, Sustainability and Society published by Emerald.
May 2024: Hussein Al Jebaei presented research on dynamic personal thermal comfort-based temperature setpoint controls at SimBuild 2024 in Denver, CO.
July 2024: Attended the ASCE EXCEED Teaching Workshop
August 2024: Recieved $5,000 worth of Google Cloud Research Credits.
Spring 2024: Dr. Aryal presented a black-box model for predicting HVAC energy consumption and PCM states at the ASCE Construction Research Congress (CRC) in Des Moines, IA.
2023
October 2023: Co-organized the "Harnessing Digital Transformation through Asset Data and Systems Interoperability" industry workshop at TAMU.
July 2023: Participated in the NSF CMMI Game Changer Academies Spring 2023 cohort.
June 2023: Hussein Al Jebaei presented his research on Phase Change Materials (PCM) in the 2023 ASCE International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering (i3CE) in Corvallis, OR.
May 2023: First MS student from HIBE Lab, Chintan Vijay Vora successfully graduated with his M.S., defending his thesis on stakeholder perception of robot adoption in construction.
April 2023: Secured an funding from TxDOT to develop an Artificial Intelligence tool for identifying potential change order items (PI: Dr. David Jeong; Co-PIs: Dr. Ashrant Aryal, John Haberman).
April 2023: Awarded a PRISE (Panther Research and Innovation for Student Enhancement) joint research grant with Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) titled "Supporting Low-Income Communities Make Customized Home Energy Retrofit Decisions Using Artificial Intelligence" (Co-PI with Dr. Rambod Rayegan).
January 2023: Received a grant from CIAC to develop a framework assessing human-exoskeleton systems (PI: Dr. Chuma Nnaji; Co-PIs: Dr. Ashrant Aryal, Dr. Xi Wang).
2022
September 2022: Awarded research funding by Shell to investigate open and interoperable data standards for asset-intensive industries (PI: Dr. David Jeong; Co-PI: Dr. Ashrant Aryal).
August 2022: Developed and launched the new graduate course, COSC 689: Data Science for the Built Environment.
March 2022: Received a TAMIDS Course Development Grant for teaching applied data science (PI: Dr. Ashrant Aryal).
March 2022: Organized a TAMIDS-supported outreach workshop on "Sensors for the Built Environment" for TAMU students.
2021
August 2021: Developed and launched the new undergraduate course, COSC 489: Intro to Data Science for the Built Environment.
July 2021: Awarded a grant by Tran-SET for the development of a robotics and automation roadmap for road construction (PI: Dr. Ashrant Aryal; Co-PI: Dr. Chao Wang).
January 2021: Named a 2021 Texas A&M Institute of Data Science (TAMIDS) Career Initiation Fellow.
January 2021: Awarded a Presidential Transformational Teaching Grant (PTTG) to teach data science to students without programming backgrounds (PI: Dr. Ashrant Aryal).
January 2021: Received a Texas A&M Triads for Transformation (T3) grant to research novel energy-saving eco-friendly concrete materials (PI: Dr. Young Rak-Kim; Co-PIs: Dr. Ashrant Aryal, Dr. Juan Carlos Baltazar).
2020
August 2020: Recognized as an Outstanding Reviewer for the journal Automation in Construction.
August 2020: Officially joined the Department of Construction Science at Texas A&M University as a Tenure Track Assistant Professor.