Academic Members

Bio

Dr. Kai Huang is an Assistant Professor in the DeGroote School of Business, Operations Management at McMaster. He specializes in the applications of optimization techniques to operations management and supply chain management. His recent research interests include logistics network capacity expansion, electricity operations management, inventory management, humanitarian logistics, and food safety. He teaches courses in operations management and supply chain management. Dr. Huang’s research work has appeared in refereed articles published in journals such as Operations Research, European Journal of Operational Research, Operations Research Letters, and Information Systems and Operational Research. Dr. Huang’s research is supported by a Discovery Grant from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

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Bio

I received my bachelor degree from the department of Automation, University of Science and Technology of China in 2008, Master’s degree (2009) and Ph.D. degree (2013) in Civil and Environmental Engineering from University of California, Irvine. I was also awarded my second Master degree (2013) in Statistics from University of California Irvine. After graduation, I worked as a Postdoctoral Associate in Virginia Tech (2013 – 2015), Visiting Assistant Professor at Lamar University (2015 – 2017), and Principal Researcher in Toyota InfoTech Labs (2017 – 2019).

Currently, I am working as an Assistant Professor in the department of Civil Engineering. My research focuses on the design and evaluation of connected and autonomous vehicle implementations to improve vehicle mobility, driving safety, and energy efficiency for the rapid development of smart cities. My major research interests include modeling and managing the behaviors of connected and autonomous vehicles to mitigate road congestions, to reduce vehicle energy consumption and emissions, and to improve the performance of road transportation services. I am also working on investigating vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications to manage transportation systems from micro- to macro-level urban networks. In addition, I am interested in exploring new mobility services in the era of connected and autonomous vehicles with the help of AI and machine learning. I believe that integrating AI and connected and autonomous vehicles will not only bring new mobility mode to the existing transportation system, but also reshape the entire society. They would be key technologies which can bring a huge resolution of transportation system for both people and goods in the near future.

Bio

Dr. Li is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at McMaster University. Her research focuses on environmental risk analysis and management. By leveraging advanced machine learning and probabilistic techniques, she introduces novel uncertainty quantification methods to water and environmental modeling and develops robust tools to support risk analysis and management. The stochastic simulation, uncertainty quantification, optimization and risk assessment techniques that she proposed have been used by her peers in civil and environmental engineering in Canada and abroad.

Bio

Dr. Saeid Habibi is a Professor and former Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McMaster University and holds the Senior Industrial Research Chair in Hybrid Technologies sponsored by NSERC and Ford Canada. As founder of the Centre for Mechatronics and Hybrid Technology at McMaster, Dr. Habibi is also co-PI in the $24M Green Auto Powertrain Project funded by the Ontario Research Fund-Research Excellence (ORF-RE) program. His research focuses on intelligent control, state and parameter estimation, fault diagnosis and prediction, variable structure systems (VSS), actuation systems, mechatronics, and fluid power. Application areas include automotive, aerospace, water distribution, and robotics. Dr. Habibi developed the smooth variable structure filter (SVSF) theory, which is a predictor-corrector model-based state estimation strategy that guarantees stability and allows extraction of a higher degree of information from measured signals through secondary indicators of performance. These characteristics make SVSF exceptionally suitable for advanced control as well as for prognostics and health monitoring in automotive systems.

Bio

Dr. Georgios Balomenos is an Assistant Professor within the Department of Civil Engineering at McMaster University and a Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, and his Bachelor and Master Degree in Civil Engineering from the Democritus University of Thrace in Greece. He is a voting member of the ACI Committee 348 – Structural Reliability and Safety, and an associate member of the ACI/ASCE Joint Committees 343 – Concrete Bridge Design, 445 – Shear and Torsion, and 447 – Finite Element Analysis of RC Structures. His research interests include fragility modeling, risk assessment and resilience quantification of infrastructure systems under multiple hazards; use of smart techniques for real-time monitoring, inspection and damage detection of bridges; probabilistic finite element analysis and structural reliability.

Bio

Rong Zheng received her Ph.D. degree from Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and earned her M.E. and B.E. in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University, P.R. China. She is a Professor in Dept. of Computing and Software, McMaster University, Canada. Her research interests include mobile computing, data analytics and networked systems.  Rong Zheng is a Canada Research Chair in Mobile Computing (Tier 1). She received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2006, and was a Joseph Ip Distinguished Engineering Fellow from 2015 – 2018. Rong Zheng is currently an editor of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing and has served on organization and technical program committees of leading mobile computing and networking conferences such as MobiSys, SenSys, INFOCOM, IPSN, RTSS, ICDCS, ICNP, etc.

Bio

Dr. Darren Scott is a Professor in the School of Earth, Environment & Society at McMaster University where he teaches courses in Geographic Information Science. Dr. Scott was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Geosciences at the University of Louisville between 1999 and 2002, and held a Visiting Research Professor position at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Zurich) in 2008. Dr. Scott’s undergraduate degree is in geography (BA. Honors and Co-op, 1991), with graduate degrees also in geography from the University of Western Ontario (MA, 1994) and McMaster University (PhD, 2000). Dr. Scott has published over ninety refereed journal articles in leading transportation, regional science, and urban studies journals. Dr. Scott’s research program has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation of the United States (NSF), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and Geomatics for Informed Decisions (GEOIDE), among other funding agencies. In 2008, Dr. Scott established a research lab – TransLAB (Transportation Research Lab) – in the School of Earth, Environment & Society where advanced transportation research is conducted by students working under his supervision.

McMaster experts profile

Bio

Dr. Altaf Arain is a professor in the School of Geography and Earth Science at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He is also the Director of the McMaster Centre for Climate Change. He was the president of the Canadian Geophysical Union (CGU) – Biogeosciences Section from 2009-2012. Dr. Arain holds a Bachelor Degree in Civil Engineering (1987) and M.Sc and Ph.D degrees in Hydrology. His research interests focus on bio- and hydro-meteorology, hydrology, climatology, air pollution, land surface-atmosphere interactions and climate modeling. He has expertise in both micrometeorological measurements and land-surface atmosphere interaction modeling. Dr. Arain’s Turkey Point energy, water and carbon flux tower sites in an age-sequence of pine forests in southern Ontario are part of global Fluxnet program. He developed the carbon and nitrogen coupled Canadian Land Surface Scheme (CN-CLASS) and Canadian Terrestrial Ecosystem Model (CTEM-N+) models. The CN-CLASS model development work was part of a multi-university collaborative modeling initiative known as the Canadian Global Coupled Carbon Climate Model, (CGC3M)) to develop a global coupled carbon climate model. Dr. Arain has been involved in interdisciplinary research initiatives to measure nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants and to investigate the effects of air pollution on human health in several urban areas of Canada. Meteorological and nitrogen dioxide data helped to improve land use regression models for health studies in urban settings. He has published more than 75 refereed journal papers.

• McMaster Centre for Climate Change
• McMaster University Profile

Bio

Dr. Hussein’s research focuses on promoting active modes of travel and enhancing road safety to support the sustainability of the transportation system. He is interested in the application of innovative tools, including AI, machine learning, computer vision and agent-based modelling, in analyzing road users’ behaviour. This comprehensive analysis supports the investigation of many applications, such as safety studies, interactions between non-motorized road users and Connected/Autonomous vehicles, among other applications. He is also interested in the application of reliability theory in transportation engineering, the statistical analysis of collision data, and the surrogate measures of safety.

Bio

Bio

Manish Verma is a Professor and Chair of the Operations Management Area in the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University. He has an MBA and a PhD in Business Administration with Operations Management/ Management Science specialization, both from the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University. His research interests are in multimodal transportation of dangerous goods, risk assessment, network design and planning issues in transportation, humanitarian logistics, green supply chain management, and disruption/ resilience in transportation systems. His current research engagements focus on safety and security issues in freight transportation and on humanitarian logistics, and are funded by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grants. His works have been published in leading international journals in transportation, and in operations research. He has been approached by media to comment on railroad accidents of dangerous goods.

Bio

Dr. Moataz Mohamed is an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at McMaster University. He has also served as a Senior Research Fellow at McMaster Institute for Transportation and Logistics (MITL), am Assistant Professor at Assiut University, Egypt and at the University of Dammam, Saudi Arabia. He graduated from the Department of Architectural Engineering, Assiut University in 2004. He holds a Master degree in Urban Planning from the University of Rome, and a PhD in Transportation Planning from Ulster University, UK.

Moataz has over a decade of teaching experience at four different universities. He taught architectural design, urban design, urban planning, city planning, transport interfaces, planning studio, and statistical analysis for both graduate and undergraduate students.

Moataz’s research agenda focuses on the utilization of perception and attitude measures in transportation research with emphasis on public transit quality, electrification of transit, electric vehicle adoption, sustainable mobility, transport safety, and transit oriented development.
Through his academic career, Moataz was awarded several academic prizes including the Runner-Up Smeed Prize for the best paper at the 44th Universities` Transport Study Group Conference (UTSG), Best Paper Award at the Irish Transport Research Network Conference (ITRN), and Best Paper Award by young author at the World Conference on Transport Research (WCTR). In addition, he is an active member of the UK Chartered Institute for Logistics and Transport (CILT), as well as the Egyptian Engineering Syndicate.

Bio

Matthew Roorda is a Professor of Civil & Mineral Engineering and has been faculty at the University of Toronto since 2005. Dr. Roorda obtained his P.Eng. in 1999. He completed his BEng at McMaster University, and his MASc and PhD degrees at the University of Toronto. Dr. Roorda has extensive experience in the development of new models of urban systems (freight and passenger), the use of those models for forecasting and analysis, and in supporting data collection initiatives. Dr. Roorda’s research interests include urban freight transportation, freight planning and operations, freight and passenger travel survey methods, city logistics, agent-based simulation, parking and curbside management, emissions analysis, activity-based travel demand modelling, and firm behaviour. Dr. Roorda is an experienced teacher at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Dr. Roorda is a Canada Research Chair in Freight Transportation and Logistics. Dr. Roorda is also the Chair of the Smart Freight Centre, a four-university research centre focused on freight research and implementation projects across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area.

Bio

Maryam Ghasemaghaei is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems. Maryam’s research falls in the area of effective data analytics for organization use. She is currently researching the impact of individual’s cognitive age on their intention to use new technologies, including wearable fitness monitoring devices. Her Ph.D. thesis examined the impact of cognitive age on individual intention to use online agents. Maryam has also studied the potential of eHealth applications for ageing in rural and remote areas.

Bio

Dr. Kubursi is a Professor (Emeritus) of Economics, McMaster University and President, Econometric Research Limited. He has taught economics at Purdue University in Indiana, USA, was senior academic visitor at Cambridge University, UK, and lectured and consulted at Harvard. Dr. Kubursi has also served as the Acting Executive Secretary which is at the Undersecretary General level and as the Acting Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia in 2006, 2007 and 2008. He is the recipient of the Canadian Centennial Medal for his outstanding academic contributions.

He has a long list of over 250 publications in international refereed journals, conference proceedings and chapters in academic books. He also published 10 books and over 150 technical reports. His main research interests are in the areas of development economics, ecological economics, natural resources, water and energy management systems, and economic policy.

Dr. Kubursi founded Econometric Research Ltd in 1972, which he has continuously served as its president. ECL is one of Canada’s leading impact analysis firms. Some of the key projects he led include assessing the economic significance and contribution of transportation activities and infrastructure to Canada’s competitive advantage, the economic impact of agriculture and food processing activities, tourism projects and flows, resource conservation, industrial development and community development in Canada, provinces, and local areas.

Econometric Research Limited (ERL) is a leading consulting firm in the areas of economic modeling, project evaluation and impact analysis, and in the design of computer models for socio-economic impact analysis as well as economic development, demographic and labour market forecasting. ERL has carried out a large number of studies in the areas of econometric modeling in the UAE, Ontario, Alberta, Nova Scotia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Indonesia and in the United States.

Bio

Diploma in Environmental Engineering (Catholic University of Brasilia, Brazil), Master in Environmental Planning and Management (Catholic University of Brasilia, Brazil), PhD in Geoscience (Geoscience Institute, University of Brasilia, Brazil; and School of Public Health, Harvard University, United States – as doctoral exchange program). His research focuses on the investigation of human exposures to gaseous and particulate air pollutants. He is also interested in spatial models to assess the relationship between air pollution and human health at local, regional and global scales. This has involved quantitative methods in Geographical Information Systems (GIS), land use models, geostatistical models, and multiple-criteria decision analysis.

Bio

Brenda Vrkljan is a Professor at the School of Rehabilitation Science, McMaster University, and a trained Occupational Therapist. Brenda understands that there is a lack of research in the area of automobile technology and mobility in older adults, which often leads to ageist policies that are implemented to discourage older adults from driving. Brenda is the lead investigator of the McMaster-Candrive team, a Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR)-funded initiative. She is passionate about promoting safe and functional mobility across the lifespan, which is evident in her research in the CanDrive initiative, a study that focuses on older adults and driving patterns. She is also involved in the development of an in-vehicle camera system for tracking the driving performance of older drivers.

Bio

I have topical interests in transportation policy, land use planning, and urban economics while applying and developing quantitative research methods involving econometrics, discrete choice modeling, and GIS-based spatial analysis In previous work, I have investigated the role of transportation services in transportation-land use interactions, regional spatial structure and change, firm location decisions, travel behavior and services, and regional urban economic growth and restructuring. Current work explores how Big Data analytics can be employed to better measure and manage road traffic congestion and how congestion influences economic and social outcomes. In other ongoing work, I am using original survey data to explore how travel demand management principles can be employed to manage travel behavior in light of finite resources while retaining positive travel experiences.

Bio

My research is focused on the relationship between form and function in cities. Using the tools and methods of GIS/geographic data science, I capture and quantify the physical form and infrastructure of the city, its urban networks and the flows of people, goods, and information they facilitate, and the use of the city as an area or volume for engaging in activities. By providing a window into how the dynamic state of the city impacts and is impacted by social, environmental, and economic processes, my work seeks to better inform policy and planning interventions and promote more sustainable urban outcomes. This is achieved through spatial and Spatio-temporal analyses of urban morphology, mobility and accessibility, real estate and land value uplift/capture, housing and neighbourhood change, choice-making behaviour, and health and wellbeing.

Bio

Antonio Paez is a full professor in the School of Earth, Environment & Society at McMaster University. Recent work includes studies on accessibility, spatial filtering, ageing and mobility, spatial analysis of qualitative variables, transportation and social exclusion, the influence of the built and social environments on travel behaviour, social networks and decision making, telework adoption, and blood donor behaviour and trends. Dr. Paez has published widely, and is author or co-author of over 110 papers, many appearing in leading international journals, including Environment and Planning A and B, Urban Studies, Geographical Analysis, Journal of Geographical Systems, Transportation, Journal of Transport Geography, Transportation, Transportation Research Part A, Papers in Regional Science, International Journal of Health Geographics, Growth and Change, and Social Networks. He also co-edited the books Progress in Spatial Analysis: Methods and Applications (published in 2009 as part of Springer’s series Advances in Spatial Science), and Population Loss: The Role of Transportation and Other Issues (published in 2018 as part of Elsevier’s Advances in Transport Policy and Planning Series). He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Geographical Systems, and sits on the editorial boards of Transportation, Journal of Transport Geography, Geographical Analysis, and International Journal of Geographical Information Science, among others.

Bio

Dr. Maoh is an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Windsor. He is also the Associate Director of the Cross Border Institute (CBI) and the founder of its Traffic Lab. Dr. Maoh is also the co-founder of the Transportation Systems Innovation (TSI) research Lab at the new Centre for Engineering Innovation at the University of Windsor. Over the past fifteen years, Professor Maoh has been involved in several academic research projects to study various transportation problems. To date, he is the author and co-author of numerous peer-reviewed international publications. He has been studying the transportation system from a holistic perspective focusing on processes governing the movement of people and goods at various geographical scales. His main research interests include land use modeling, cross-border and freight transportation, network analysis, big-data analysis, travel demand analysis, passenger and commercial travel behavior, sustainable cities, development of geospatial planning support system and GIS applications. His research activities have been supported through various agencies including Infrastructure Canada, Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Automotive Partnership Canada (APC), Canadian Foundation of Innovation (CFI), Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO), Transport Canada, Canadian Border Services Agency, and FedDev Ontario. In 2015, Professor Maoh was the recipient of the Faculty of Engineering Medal of Excellence for best junior engineering research faculty member at the University of Windsor. He was also the recipient of the University of Windsor 2016 Award for Excellence in Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity.

Bio

Dr. Hany Hassan is currently working as a senior research fellows at McMaster Institute for Transportation and Logistics (MITL). Hany received his Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering (transportation engineering with specialization in traffic safety) from the University of Central Florida (UCF), USA while; he was awarded his bachelor and master degrees in Civil Engineering from Ain Shams University, Egypt.

Hany’s research interests include traffic safety, Intelligent Transportation Systems, Emerging Technologies in Transportation, Environmental Impact of Transportation, Smart cities, highway design, human factors and drivers’ behavior, statistical applications in transportation engineering.

Hany has about 17 years’ experience in the Transportation engineering field. He has served as an assistant professor of Transportation Engineering at Ain Shams University, Egypt and King Saud University, Saudi Arabia. Hany spent about five years in the private sector during working as projects manager of Transportation Engineering at Tatweer for Traffic Assets & Systems Operation and Management L.L.C., Abu Dhabi, UAE. During this period, he managed several projects related to roads design, traffic impact studies, Intelligent Transportation Systems, developing a GIS-based traffic safety management system for Abu Dhabi, and developing a national transportation tracking system for UAE.

Hany has also more than eight years’ experience in teaching undergraduate/graduate courses of transportation engineering including Traffic Safety, Highway Geometric Design, Structural Design of Highways pavement, Traffic Engineering, applications of statistics in Transportation Engineering and Surveying. In addition, Hany has many influential papers published in the top Journals of Transportation Engineering including Accident Analysis and Prevention, Transportation Research C & F, Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Journal of Safety Research and Journal of Transportation Safety and Security.

Since 2011, Hany is serving as a member of Transportation Research Board (TRB) Committee on User Information Systems, AND20. He is also an active member of the Egyptian Engineering Syndicate. Through his academic career, Hany was awarded several academic prizes including the Intelligent Transportation Society of Florida scholarship (the Anne S. Brewer Scholarship), one of three recipients on the state level.

Hany can be reached via email at: h.hassan@mcmaster.ca