People

Current
Alumni

Dr. Christian Claudel
Christian is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at UT Austin. His research interests include control and estimation of distributed parameter systems, cyberphysical systems monitoring, and the use of wireless sensor networks for environmental applications. Department webpage: https://www.caee.utexas.edu/people/faculty/faculty-directory/claudel
Email: christian.claudel@utexas.edu
Ahmad Yehia
Ahmad Yehia is a graduate research assistant dedicated to promoting Emerging Transportation Technologies and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). From his early days at UT Austin, his research has focused on providing intellectual principles and tools to explore the intersection of Augmented Reality (AR) systems and Pedestrian Safety, leveraging LiDAR technology, video surveillance data, and AR glasses. Prior to taking this role on Dr. Claudel's team in Fall 2023, Ahmad earned his Master's degree in Transportation Engineering from Tongji University in August 2022. His graduation thesis, which received the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the College of Transportation Engineering, focused on crash risk analysis for Active Traffic Management (ATM) systems in Shanghai. Away from his research, Ahmad has enjoyed teaching kindergarten during the summer for the past few years. He is a cinephile who loves every movie genre, and an avid fan of authentic, non-gimmicky food recipes.
Email: ahmad.yehia@utexas.edu
Stefanos S. Politis
Stefanos is a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated with an integrated BEng/MEng degree in surveying engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in Greece. During his studies at the University of Texas at Austin, he earned an MS degree in Civil Engineering while also completing a portfolio in applied statistical modeling. He works as a graduate research assistant at the Center for Transportation Research and has received various scholarships and awards including the John E. Kasch Endowed Graduate Fellowship. His current research interests include remote sensing and machine learning applications in transportation asset management as well as simulation of infrastructure networks. He has served as board member at the Institute of Transportation Engineers and the Intelligent Transportation Society student chapters and was a co-founder of the Greek & Cypriot Society of UT Austin.
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Jiseop Byeon
Jiseop Byeon is a master’s student in Civil Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include human motion prediction for the development of novel pedestrian collision avoidance algorithms and systems, leveraging low-cost camera sensors and Augmented Reality (AR) devices. Prior to joining the lab, he grew up in Seoul, South Korea, and graduated summa cum laude from Hanyang University with a B.S. in Architectural Engineering and a minor in Mechanical Engineering. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jiseop-byeon-887086208/ Email: jsbyeon@utexas.edu
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Tianyi Wang
Tianyi is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. In May 2025, he received a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from Yale University. Prior to that, he earned his Bachelor of Engineering degree in Vehicle Engineering (Automobile) from Tongji University in China. He has been a remote research assistant in Urban Information Lab at UT Austin and Digital Twin Lab at Purdue. His research interests include intelligent transportation systems and connected and automated vehicles, particularly in decision-making, trajectory-planning and cooperative control. His research vision is to build a safer, more efficient, and more stable autonomous driving system. Personal website: https://www.tianyi-wang-010705.com/ Email: bonny.wang@utexas.edu
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Ali (Arsalan) Khanpour
Ali Khanpour received his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from Babol Noshirvani University of Technology (NUT) and his M.S. in Transportation Engineering from Imam Khomeini International University (IKIU). He was recognized as a national top researcher and achieved a single digit rank in the Ph.D. entrance exam (Konkur) in Civil Engineering, awarded by the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology of Iran (2021–2022). Ali joined Dr. Claudel's research group in Fall 2024. His research focuses on human-centered system design, neuroergonomics, interdisciplinary methods combining transportation engineering (road, rail, advanced air mobility) with human factors (cognitive neuroscience, psychology), art and artificial intelligence. He currently works on predictive algorithms and risk scoring systems for crash likelihood, virtual psychological/cognitive sensor for CAVs, Biomimicry (Bio-inspired Engineering), quantum computing, and human-AI driving interfaces. The idea was to help AVs understand not just what drivers do, but maybe a little bit of what they feel. He also explores symbolic frameworks inspired by space exploration for modeling next-generation transportation systems. In addition, Ali is passionate about sports, notably wrestling, and fine art (painting), and he plays the saxophone. Email: ali.khanpour@utexas.edu Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ali-khanpour-a56042146/
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Dr. Shahrazed Elmetennani

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Shahrazed was a post doctoral researcher in the CAEE department of the University of Texas, Austin. Her research is in the area of systems control. It involves the design of new control and soft-sensing strategies for physical systems with limited measurements and/or subject to unpredictable external disturbances.
Email: shahrazed.elmetennani@utexas.edu
Dr. Abduallah Mohamed

Following UT Austin: Applied Research Scientist at META
Abduallah earned his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas, Austin. He is an experienced automotive R&D engineer. His research interests include deep learning, sensors data fusion, and computer vision. His research involves human in the loop control of partially autonomous system, with a current focus on traffic safety. Abduallah worked in multiple international companies and holds a patent in deep learning. Website: https://www.abduallahmohamed.com/
Email: abduallah.mohamed@utexas.edu
Dr. Andrew Alexander

Following UT Austin: Spacex
Andrew's research focuses on the application of UAS (unmanned aerial systems) for civil purposes. Specifically, he looked into the use of fixed wing aircraft for flash flood monitoring and data assimilation as well as quadcopter aircraft for traffic sensing. He is interested in many different aerospace technologies (high-power rocketry, space systems technologies, UAS, etc.), and hopes to make a meaningful contribution to the aerospace engineering field that helps to solve some of the greatest technological challenges. For hobbies, he likes to learn new things (this involves lots of extracurricular activities), work out, swim, play guitar, spend as much time outside as possible, and play with his baby daughter.
Email: ealexander456@gmail.com
Dr. Michele Simoni

Following UT Austin: Postdoc at MIT
Michele earned a PhD from the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. His research involves studying and developing models and algorithms for traffic simulations. Some of the applications of his work include the estimation and control of distributed parameter systems. Besides traffic flow theory, his main interests consist of urban freight distribution and congestion pricing. You can find more information about his research at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michele_Simoni3
Email: m.simoni@utexas.edu
Sadegh Yarmohammadisatri

Following UT Austin: PhD student at Virginia Tech
Sadegh was a visiting scholar working on a new type deflection measuring device for non-invasive pavement monitoring, based on high precision LIDARs, accelerometers and ring laser gyroscopes. He also focuses on autonomous vehicles, and on pavement serviceability rating measurements. His research interests include dynamics, vibration, automotive systems, optimization, uncertainty analysis and pavement analysis. His hobbies include swimming and ping pong. He also loves discovering new cultures. He can speak Persian (mother language), English and has a basic knowledge of French and German.
Email: yarmohammadi.sadegh@gmail.com
Dr. Tian Lei

Following UT Austin: Postdoc in Purdue University
Tian was a postdoctoral scholar working on real-time traffic estimation and monitoring. She is directly involved in software and hardware development for Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) based wireless traffic sensing system. Her research uses techniques like signal processing and sensor data fusion. The applications of her research includes real-time speed estimation, trajectory estimation and map matching using wireless sensing system. On parallel, Tian works on viability-constrained solutions to Hamilton-Jacobi equations, with applications to autonomous vehicles.
Email: sasleitian@outlook.com
Vishnu Santhosh

Following UT Austin: NASA Houston
Vishnu earned his Bachelors at The University of Texas at Austin majoring in Aerospace Engineering with a certification in Computational Engineering. His interest areas include programming, experimenting with RC aircrafts, and playing football.
Email: vishnusanthosh7040@utexas.edu
Alexander Minbaev

Following UT Austin: IBM, Austin.
Alexander was a graduate student in Operations Research at the University of Texas, Austin. He currently works on network traffic state estimation, and Inertial-Measurement-Unit based traffic flow monitoring.
Email: alexander.minbaev@utexas.edu
Ofer Eldad

Following UT Austin: Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd
Ofer's research concerns developing a control supervisor for UAVs. By using classical reachability techniques he is able to predict what state the aircraft will be in and assist in preventing it from getting into unsafe scenarios when it’s controlled either by a human operator or by its autopilot. His goal is to use this control system to allow him to use the UAV in real-time flood monitoring. In this project machine-learning methods are used to tackle the computational challenges involved in the real-time reachability problem.
Email: ofer.eldad@gmail.com
Arthur Erickson

Following UT Austin: CoFounder of the drone delivery company Hylio, Inc
Originally from Houston, Arthur earned his Bachelor's in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas, Austin. He has a particular interest in control systems and automation. He has been tinkering with UAVs since he started school at UT, and tries to apply everything he learns towards experimenting with and improving UAVs. He is also cofounder of a drone-based delivery startup.
Email: arthurerickson92@gmail.com
Kapil Sharma

Following UT Austin: DigitasLBi (Publicis Group)
Kapil was a graduate student in Electrical & Computer engineering. His research focuses on developing AR based traffic safety system. These systems will work on fusing real-time video and IMU sensing on-board smart glasses like Google Glass, ODG-R7 etc. to come up with a collision prediction and prevention system. He is a coding geek and helps the group in various aspects of embedded systems, from bringing up the hardware to write software for it. His other project is developing GPS-less (IMU based) tracking systems which our group works on with Texas Department of Transportation (TxDot). His other interests include Artificial Intelligence, developing cool things with chip size computers like Raspberry PI.
Email: kapil@utexas.edu
Dr. Kun Qian

Following UT Austin: Applied Research Scientist at Amazon
Kun Qian's research interests are in recommendation systems and multi-agent systems related problems. Kun is now an Applied Scientist working in Amazon Search Science and AI department.
Email: kunqian@utexas.edu
Dr. Suyash Vishnoi

Following UT Austin: Postdoc at Georgia Tech
Suyash was a graduate student in the CAEE department of UT Austin. He graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. His research interests include traffic simulation, traffic control, optimization and ITS. He enjoys cooking, reading and playing video games.
Email: scvishnoi@utexas.edu
Dr. Hassan Iqbal

Following UT Austin: Postdoc at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering & Sciences.
Hassan earned his PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. During his PhD, Hassan worked on state estimation of distributed parameter systems with team of autonomous mobile sensors and developed an autonomous rover to detect and classify microplastics on beaches in real-time. Hassan is currently a postdoctoral fellow and develops AI surrogate models for monitoring and control of complex systems described by PDEs.
Email: hassan.iqbal@utexas.edu
Ekin Ugurel

Following UT Austin: PhD Student at University of Washington
Ekin was an undergraduate student in the CAEE Department of UT Austin. Ekin was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey before moving to Texas for high school. His research interests include vehicular aerodynamics, network optimization, traffic simulation, autonomous vehicles, and data science. He likes talking politics, playing soccer and basketball, traveling, and hanging out with his dog Lunita.
Email: ekinugurel@utexas.edu
Joaquin Bernardo Hernandez

Following UT Austin: Project Manager at the Transtec Group
Joaquin Hernandez was a full-time researcher working for the Center for Transportation Research (CTR) at the University of Texas, Austin. His research involved developing a novel system for pavement deflection using high-speed laser-sensors. Other work pertain to pavement friction, noise and texture in flexible and rigid pavement. Aside from research, he enjoys cooking, traveling and is a car enthusiast.
Email: joaquinh@utexas.edu
Gracie Gumm

Masters student in the CAEE department.
Gracie is a Masters student in the CAEE department of the University of Texas at Austin. Originally from Nashville, Tennessee, she earned her B.E. in Civil Engineering from Vanderbilt University in May 2023, where she contributed to a large-scale field experiment testing the effects of mixed autonomy on fuel usage. Her research interests are broadly in applications of transportation cyber-physical systems for improving transportation safety and equity.
Email: graciegumm@utexas.edu
Dr. Hao Liu

Following UT Austin: Postdoc at Penn State
Hao earned his PhD from the CAEE department at the University of Texas at Austin. His research centers around traffic flow modeling and optimization, traffic signal control, and shared mobility. After graduation, Hao worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Pennsylvania State University. Hao joined the Jackson State University as an assistant professor in August 2024.
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