News
05/2024: Yanmo Weng successfully defended his doctoral dissertation: Investigating machine learning as an extrapolation approach in the wind engineering domain! Congrats Yanmo!
04/2024: New publication from the Paal Research Group, first authored by Yanmo Weng in the Journal of Building Engineering: Extrapolating wind pressures on roof soffits of low-rise buildings using few-shot learning. Read it here!
03/2024: Dr. Paal attended the ACI conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. She chaired another successful meeting of the ACI 135 Committee: Machine Learning-Informed Construction and Design!
02/2024: Dr. Paal received the Professor Achievement Award from the ACI Houston Chapter. Since the award was given out in Houston, she got to bring her husband along for this celebration!
01/2024: Paal Research Group student Jangjae Lee presented his work on predicting power outages due to winter storms at the NHERI Computational Symposium at UCLA.
New Publication out of the Paal Research Group by PhD student Yanmo Weng on using few-shot learning to extrapolate wind pressures of roof soffits. The article is published in the Journal of Building Engineering. Read it here!
12/2023: A big congratulations to Paal Research Group members Hongrak Pak and Samuel Leach on their doctoral graduations! We had a great evening celebrating them with the entire research group and their families and friends. Hooding my stellar PhD students is 100% a highlight of my job!
10/2023: New pubication in Engineering with Computers by Huan Luo and Stephanie Paal: A novel outlier insensitive local support vector machine for robust data-driven forecasting in engineering! Read it here!
09/2023: Dr. Paal moderated a panel at the NSF Harnessing the Data Revolution Ecoysystem Workshop on Data Science Education in Denver, Colorado.
08/2023: New publication in the Transportation Research Record, first authored by Paal Research Group Ph.D. student Yanmo Weng and co-authored by collaborator Subasish Das and Stephanie Paal: Applying few-shot learning in classifying pedestrian crash typing.
07/2023: Dr. Paal presented the recent research findings from PhD students Yanmo Weng and Hongrak Pak at the EG-ICE conference in London, UK.
06/2023: Paal Research Group graduate students Jacob Murphy, Yanmo Weng, Hongrak Pak, and Jangjae Lee presented their recent research results at the Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference in Atlanta, Georgia!
05/2023: Dr. Paal was invited to present her work on the use of transfer learning in civil engineering at the Task Group Meeting of the ASCE Structures Congress conference in New Orleans, Louisiana.
07/2023: New publication in Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering on A knowledge transfer enhanced ensemble approach to predict the shear capacity of reinforced concrete deep beams without stirrups. This paper was co-authored by Paal Research Group students Hongrak Pak and Samuel Leach. Read it here!
07/2023: Dr. Paal presented the recent research findings from PhD students Yanmo Weng and Hongrak Pak at the EG-ICE conference in London, UK.
06/2023: Paal Research Group graduate students Jacob Murphy, Yanmo Weng, Hongrak Pak, and Jangjae Lee presented their recent research results at the Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference in Atlanta, Georgia!
05/2023: Dr. Paal was invited to present her work on the use of transfer learning in civil engineering at the Task Group Meeting of the ASCE Structures Congress conference in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Dr. Paal with Prof. Ian Smith and friends at the EG-ICE conference in London, UK.
NSF HDR Ecosystem workshop attendees (Dr. Paal is in there somewhere).
04/2023: New Publication in Elsevier's Journal of Advanced Engineering Informatics: Physics-informed few-shot learning for wind pressure prediction of low-rise buildings. Paal Research Group Ph.D. student, Yanmo Weng, is a co-author on the manuscript. Read it here!
01/2023: Dr. Paal was appointed to the Williams Brothers Construction Company Career Development Professorship. This is an endowed professorship in recognition of her exceptional record as a researcher and educator.
01/2023: New Publication in the Journal of Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering: A knowledge transfer enhanced ensemble approach to predict the shear capacity of reinforced concrete deep beams without stirrups. This work was spearheaded by Paal Research Group PhD student Hongrak Pak as a result of the graduate class Dr. Paal developed at TAMU: Machine Intelligence & Applications in Civil Engineering! Read it here.
01/2023: New Publication in the Springer Journal Engineering with Computers: A novel outlier-insensitive local support vector machine for data-driven regression. Read it here.
New Publication in Elsevier's Journal of Accident Analysis and Prevention: Safe route-finding: A review of literature and future directions. Paal Research Group Ph.D. student, Yanmo Weng, is a co-author on the manuscript along with collaborators Soheil Sohrabi and Subasish Das out of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. Read it here!
11/2022: Dr. Paal attended RECONS 2022: The Resilient Electric Grid Consortium of North America Symposium. She was invited to speak on recent work towards Leveraging Machine Learning to Predict Power Outages after Winter Storm Uri.
09/2022: Dr. Paal was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.
09/2022: New Publication in Elsevier's Journal of Engineering Structures: Evaluation of transfer learning models for predicting the lateral strength of reinforced concrete columns. Paal Research Group Ph.D. student, Hongrak Pak, is the first author. Read it here!
08/2022: Dr. Paal spearheaded the creation of a new ACI committee! Committee 135: Machine Learning-Informed Construction and Design. She will chair the committee. Check out more here!
This Fall, the Paal Research Group welcomed a new Ph.D. student, Jacob Murphy. Jacob previously worked with the group as an undergraduate student researcher, graduating from TAMU in Spring 2022!
06/2022: Dr. Paal attended the 12NCEE: Reimagining Risk and Resilience in Salt Lake City, Utah. She took place in an exciting debate: Machine Learning: Hope, Hype or Hindrance. The special session was voted one of the most valuable at the conference!
06/2022: Paal Research Group graduate students Yanmo Weng, Hongrak Pak, Samuel Leach, and Jacob Pavelka attended the Engineering Mechanics Institute Conference in Baltimore, MD. They all presented their recent research results with raving reviews!
05/2022: New Publication in Elsevier's Journal of Engineering Structures: Machine learning-based wind pressure prediction of low-rise non-isolated buildings. Paal Research Group Ph.D. student, Yanmo Weng, is the first author. Read it here!
05/2022: Dr. Paal was awarded the Texas A&M Institute of Data Science Career Initiation fellowship! As part of this fellowship, she will be organizing a Bring Your Own Data workshop at TAMIDS in Spring 2023!
04/2022: New Publication in Elsevier's Journal of Advanced Engineering Informatics: Artificial intelligence-enhanced seismic response prediction of reinforced concrete frames. Paal Research Group recent Ph.D. graduate, Dr. Huan Luo, is the first author. Read it here!
02/2022: New Publication in Wiley's Journal of Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering: A data-free, support vector machine-based physics-driven estimator for dynamic response prediction. Paal Research Group recent Ph.D. graduate, Dr. Huan Luo, is the first author. Read it here!
10/2021: New Publication in Elsevier's Journal of Engineering Structures: Experimental and Computational Investigation of a Load-Posted Steel Beam Bridge. Read it here!
10/2021: New Publication in Earthquake Spectra: Data-driven seismic response prediction of structural components. Paal Research Group recent Ph.D. graduate, Dr. Huan Luo, is the first author on the paper. Read it here!
09/2021: Dr. Paal was awarded a grant from the NSF Division of Information and Intelligent Systems for work towards the Infusion of Data Science and Computation into Engineering Curricula. This is a collaborative grant through the HDR program with researchers at Penn State University.
09/2021: Dr. Paal was elected to serve as a committee member on the NHERI User Forum.
05/2021: Dr. Paal was invited to give a Tech Talk at Thornton Tomasetti. She spoke about Leveraging existing knowledge and AI to enhance our understanding of structural performance under small data scenarios.
This Spring and Summer, the Paal Research Group also welcomed several new members! Welcome PhD students Yanmo Weng and Jangjae Lee, MS student Jacob Pavelka, and undergraduate students Jacob Murphy and Thomas Warnasch! Check out our group page to see more about what they are all working on!
05/2021: New Publication in ASCE's Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities: Data Augmentation for Improving Deep Learning Models in Building Inspections or Postdisaster Evaluation. Paal Research Group Ph.D. student, Samuel Leach, is the first author on the paper, and this work is a product of the collaboration between the Paal Research Group and colleagues and researchers in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering. Read it here!
05/2021: New Publication in Elsevier's Journal Structures: Metaheuristic Least Squares Support Vector Machine-Based Lateral Strength Modeling of Reinforced Concrete Columns Subjected to Earthquake Loads. Paal Research Group recent Ph.D. graduate, Dr. Huan Luo, is the first author on the paper. Read it here!
03/2021: Dr. Paal was awarded a T3-grant from TAMU towards A Human-Centered Decision Support System for Improving Urban Resilience in Disaster Management. Dr. Zhang from Geography is the PI. Dr. Paal is a Co-PI on the project along with Dr. Gharaibeh from CVEN.
03/2021: Dr. Paal was invited to speak on the Disaster Prediction Panel at the Identifying Data Guideline Needs for Community and Regional Resilience Modeling Workshop. The workshop was hosted by the Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning.
03/2021: Dr. Paal was invited to speak at Purdue University for their Structural Engineering Student seminar.
01/2021: New Publication in Elsevier's Journal of Advanced Engineering Informatics: Advancing post-earthquake structural evaluations via sequential regression-based mean matching for enhanced forecasting in the context of missing data. Recently graduated Paal Research Group Ph.D. student Huan Luo is the first author on the publication. Read it here!
12/2020: Paal Research Group Ph.D. student Huan Luo successfully defended his thesis and graduated with a doctoral degree in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M! Congrats Huan! Dr. Huan Luo is now on faculty at China Three Gorges University!
11/2020: Dr. Paal was invited to speak at George Mason University for the graduate seminar and at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. They were both virtual presentations.
09/2020: Dr. Paal was awarded a grant from the Department of Veteran's Affairs for work on the Veteran’s Legacy Geographic Information System: Citizen Science Approach to Extended Memorialization Digitally. This work is a collaborative effort with several researchers across Texas A&M. The PI of the project is Stacey Lyle. Read more about the project here.
09/2020: New Publication in Wiley's Journal of Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering: Reducing the effect of sample bias for small datasets with double-weighted support vector transfer regression. Paal Research Group Ph.D. student Huan Luo is the first author on the publication. Read it here!
09/2020: Dr. Paal was invited to speak virtually at The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on her research towards leveraging existing knowledge and artificial intelligence to enhance our understanding of structural performance.
08/2020: Dr. Paal was invited to speak virtually at ACI Strategic Development Council on integrating traditional civil engineering practices with artificial intelligence.
01/2020: Dr. Paal was granted an NSF CAREER award for her project Leveraging Existing Knowledge and Artificial Intelligence to Understand the Performance of Civil Infrastructure Under Extreme Hazard Loads. The award is provided by the National Science Foundation Engineering for Critical Infrastructure (ECI) Program. Dr. Paal is the sole PI of the project.
10/2019: Dr. Paal was awarded a grant from the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) for work on the development of a real-time decision support tool for rural roadway safety improvements. This work is a collaborative effort with several researchers at the Texas Transportation Institute. The PI of the project is Dr. Subasish Das.
07/17/2019: Dr. Paal was invited to speak at the Software Developer's Cartel in Downtown Bryan, Texas.
07/03/2019: Dr. Paal was invited to speak at the DesignSafe-QuakeCoRE Cyberinfrastructure workshop in Nelson, New Zealand regarding her work towards machine learning for seismic performance prediction of reinforced concrete components.
08/26/2019: The American Concrete Institute (ACI) Strategic Development Council (SDC) invited Dr. Paal to speak at their 46th Technology Forum on Integrating traditional civil engineering practices with artificial intelligence: a hybrid approach to our understanding of structural behavior in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
05/30/2019: Dr. Paal was invited to speak at the NSF-CMMI Annual Site Visit on her use of the DesignSafe Cyberinfrastructure in her research in Austin, Texas.
04/30/2019: New Publication in Wiley's Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering: A locally-weighted machine learning model for generalized prediction of drift capacity in seismic vulnerability assessments. Paal Research Group Ph.D. student Huan Luo and Dr. Paal are co-authors on the publication. Read it here!
04/24/2019-04/27/2019: Dr. Paal and Paal Research Group Ph.D. student, Huan Luo, presented at the ASCE Structures Congress in Orlando, Florida. Huan presented a "Performance Comparison between Formulas and AI-based models in predicting shear strength of RC columns", and Dr. Paal gave a presentation on her vision for "The Future of Structural Sensing".
Dr. Paal also organized the session on The Future of Structural Sensing along with David Lattanzi from George Mason University.
Above: Ph.D. student, Huan Luo, presenting at the 2019 Structures Congress.
Right: Dr. Paal and colleagues from her time at Georgia Tech reunited at the 2019 Structures Congress!
04/08/2019: Paal Research Group Ph.D. student Samuel Leach has been awarded the 2019 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship! The three-year fellowship is a significant and prestigious national accomplishment!
04/05/2019: Dr. Paal hosted Matthew Vanture, VDC Manager at Whiting-Turner, for the CGS Graduate Seminar Series. Matt gave a presentation entitled Science Fiction or Construction Reality...Augmented Reality in Construction.
04/04/2019:
Hongrak Pak, Ph.D. student in the Paal Research Group, presented at the TAMU President's Excellence Fund Symposium regarding in-situ deficiency detection and characterization for automated structural repair. This work is funded through the T3: Texas A&M Triads for Transformation program.
03/2019: Dr. Paal has been selected as an ASCE ExCEEd fellow. She will attend the 2019 ASCE ExCEEd Teaching Workshop at the United States Military Academy at West Point July 21-28, 2019.
03/18/2019-03/19/2019: Dr. Paal was invited to speak as a panelist at the NSF International Workshop to Develop Research Campaigns, Interdisciplinary Teams and Disruptive Technologies for the NHERI 5-Year Science Plan for Natural Hazards in Arlington, Virginia. Her idea presentation title was: Data-driven disaster science: an artificially intelligent approach to performance-based engineering. Dr. Paal also served on the workshop organizing committee.
03/01/2019: Dr. Paal was awarded a grant from the United Services Automobile Association (USAA) for work on the development of automated post-disaster damage detection algorithms. This work is a collaborative effort with Dr. Robin Murphy and Dr. Atlas Wang from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at TAMU. Dr. Paal is the PI of the project.
02/21/2019: Dr. Paal was invited to serve as a panelist for an ACI Innovation in Concrete Construction webinar on the use of new technology in post-extreme event reconnaissance.
01/30/2019: Paal Research Group Ph.D. student Nipun Nath receives a Departmental Fellowship for Spring 2019 for his continued academic achievement in the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering.
12/21/2018: Paal Research Group Ph.D. student Huan Luo receives an Engineering Graduate Student Travel Award. With this award, Huan will present his research at the upcoming 2019 Structures Congress in Orlando, Florida, April 24-27.
12/19/2018: The Paal Research Group welcomed a new Ph.D, student: Hongrak Pak, who will be working towards data-driven co-design of materials and structures for optimal, unique retrofit solutions.
12/06/2018-12/07/2018:
Dr. Paal attended the NSF NHERI joint Wall of Wind / ATLSS Workshop at Florida International University.
11/16/2018: Dr. Paal was invited by the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Rice University to present her work titled, Exploring the usefulness of available experimental data: a machine learning-focused approach to predicting seismic performance as part of their departmental seminar series.
10/07/2018: The journal paper, Performance Assessment of Building Infrastructure Impacted by the 2017 Hurricane Harvey in the Port Aransas Region, is in the most read papers of the month (September) and has been selected to be featured in the Editor's Choice section.
10/04/2018: Dr. Paal and Paal Research Group Ph.D. student Samuel Leach attended Lloyd’s Day at Rice University: The Smart and Resilient City.
09/10/2018-09/12/2018: Dr. Paal attended the Digital Concrete Conference in Zurich, Switzerland.
09/07/2018: Dr. Paal was invited by the Applied Computing and Mechanics Laboratory at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne to present her work titled, Exploring the usefulness of available experimental data: a machine learning-focused approach to predicting seismic capacity.
08/27/2018: The Paal Research Group welcomed two new Ph.D. students: Samuel Leach, who will be working on enhanced understanding of disaster response and community resilience via machine learning strategies and Nipun Nath, who will be working on rapid bench-marking and improving construction safety and progress monitoring using artificial intelligence and distributed sensing.
08/16/2018: Emily Miller, M.S. student in the Paal Research Group, successfully defended her thesis: Automating bridge inspection procedures: real-time UAS-based detection and tracking of concrete bridge elements. Congratulations to the first graduate of the Paal Research Group!
08/01/2018: Dr. Paal was awarded a grant from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) for work on Damage Assessment of Residential Infrastructure Impacted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma along with Dr. Koliou. Dr. Paal is the Co-PI.
06/20/2018: Dr. Paal's work on automating damage assessments towards enhancing community resilience in collaboration with Dr. Maria Koliou was featured by the TAMU College of Engineering. Check out the video and read on for the full article here.
06/18/2018-06/22/2018: Dr. Paal competed in and won the second-annual David Dornfeld Manufacturing Vision Award and Blue Sky Competition at the Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference (MSEC)/North American Manufacturing Research Conference (NAMRC46) with her presentation: 3D Printing for Civil Infrastructure Construction. The presenting group consisted of a diverse group of researchers from TAMU: Dr. Paal, Dr. Alaa Elwany, Dr. Zachary Grasley, Dr. Negar Kalantar, and Dr. Zofia Rybkowski. Read the full article here or click on the image on the right.
06/04/2018-06/06/2018: Dr. Paal was awarded a travel grant from the NSF National Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) program and attended the NHERI Summer Institute at UTSA.
04/19/2018-04/21/2018: Dr. Paal attended the 2018 ASCE Structure's Congress and Technical Committees.
04/15/2018: New Publication in ASCE's Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities: Performance Assessment of Building Infrastructure Impacted by the 2017 Hurricane Harvey in the Port Aransas Region. Dr. Maria Koliou, a colleague at Texas A&M, and Ph.D. student Mohammad Aghababaei are co-authors on the paper. Read it here!
04/11/2018: New Publication in ASCE's Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering: Machine Learning-Based Backbone Curve Model of Reinforced Concrete Columns Subjected to Cyclic Loading Reversals. Paal Research Group Ph.D. student Huan Luo and Dr. Paal are co-authors on the publication. Read it here!
04/01/2018: Dr. Paal was awarded a T3 grant towards in-situ deficiency detection and characterization for automated structural repair. Dr. Paal is the PI. The T3: Triads for Transformation is an interdisciplinary seed-grant program that is part of the Texas A&M Presidents Excellence fund.
04/01/2018: Dr. Paal was awarded a travel grant to attend the NEHRI Summer Institute in San Antonio, TX, June 4-6, 2018.
03/09/2018-03/10/2018: Asim Bashir, graduate research assistant in the Paal Research Group traveled to Port Aransas, TX to collect UAS-data of post-hurricane damaged structures. Check out this video about the project.
03/01/2018: New Publication in ASCE's Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering: Leak Detection of Water Supply Networks Using Error-Domain Model Falsification. The paper is co-authored by recent Ph.D. graduate Gaudenz Moser and Prof. Ian Smith from EPFL and Dr. Paal.
01/25/2018: Dr. Paal developed and introduced a new graduate course in the Department of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M for the Spring 2018 semester: CVEN689: Machine Intelligence and Applications in Civil Engineering (Course Website).
10/31/2017: Dr. Paal was invited to give a presentation on augmented reality at the Infrastructure Advancement Institute, October 31, 2017. Her presentation was entitled Augmenting Human Intelligence with Artificial Intelligence in Civil Design and Construction.
09/28/2017-09/29/2017: Dr. Paal attended the Megamanufacturing Workshop in Lake Conroe, TX, hosted by the Texas A&M Center for Infrastructure Renewal (CIR).
09/15/2017: Dr. Paal joined the Younger Member Committee of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute.
09/01/2017: Dr. Paal was awarded a research grant from the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to develop a strategy to address load-posted bridges through reduction in uncertainty in load ratings. Dr. Paal serves as a Co-PI for this project.
08/15/2017: The Paal Research Group welcomed two graduate students: Asim Bashir (graduate research asssistant), who will be working on evaluating the impact of domain expert involvement in automated inspection operations, and Huan Luo (Ph.D. student), who will be working on augmenting human intelligence with machine intelligence for real-time evaluation of post-earthquake damaged buildings.
07/13/2017-07/14/2017:
Dr. Paal organized and attended the NSF Workshop on Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing) for Civil Infrastructure Design and Construction in Arlington, VA. The workshop details and report are available online (Organizing team pictured).
06/25/2017-06/27/2017: Dr. Paal attended the 2017 International Workshop on Computing in Civil Engineering (IWCCE) in Seattle, Washington and attended DSA/VIMS committee meetings.
03/01/2017: Dr. Paal received an NSF grant for the Workshop on Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing) for Civil Infrastructure Design and Construction, Arlington, VA, July 13-14, 2017 along with the co-organizers: ZJ Pei, Satish Bukkapatnam, John Mander, and Li Zeng.
01/01/2017: The Paal Research Group welcomed a new M.S. student, Emily Miller. She will focus on developing automated, real-time routine bridge inspections via unmanned aerial systems.
10/01/2016: New Publication in Elsevier's Journal of Advanced Engineering Informatics: An electrical network for evaluating monitoring strategies intended for hydraulic pressurized networks. The paper is co-authored by recent Ph.D. graduate Gaudenz Moser and Prof. Ian Smith from EPFL and Dr. Paal.
09/01/2016: Dr. Paal was awarded a research grant from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program along with researchers from the Texas Transportation Institute, to research machine vision for road markings.
09/01/2016: New Publication in the Journal of Structure and Infrastructure Engineering: Measurement system design for leak detection in hydraulic pressurized networks. The paper is co-authored by recent Ph.D. graduate Gaudenz Moser and Prof. Ian Smith from EPFL and Dr. Paal.
08/01/2016: Dr. Paal joined the faculty at Texas A&M University as a Tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering.