I have been an assistant professor at the University of Alberta Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering since August 2011. Prior to this I was a post-doctoral researcher and graduate student researcher at Berkeley, at the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS), in particular the National Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations Research (NEXTOR). I was also a student researcher at the California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH). My research areas and tools include traffic operations, transportation economics, air transportation, transportation systems analysis and optimization, capacity and resource issues, and econometrics and data analysis. I am also interested in exploring transportation policy issues, and how multi-modal trips and modal transfers affect travel decisions. I have been funded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), and Federal Highways Administration (FHWA) through the Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program.
I was involved in several projects throughout the course of my MS and PhD studies. At the beginning of my PhD studies I was involved in a freeway weaving analysis project, where we tested several analysis methods with data from freeway weaving sites primarily from California, but from other parts of the country as well.
My graduate work was mainly focused on transportation operations issues within aviation. Some of the projects I have and continue to work on include runway capacity analysis, delay analysis, air traffic flow management, and simulation studies. My dissertation research was focused on en route air traffic flow management issues, particularly in the context of the US National Airspace System. It investigates how we can strategically reallocate constrained en route resources during times of capacity shortfall (due to heavy demand, weather issues, special-use airspace designation, or other reasons). In particular, we investigate the problem in the context of a future version of the Airspace Flow Program (AFP). In this research, we study how reduced airspace capacity can be redistributed by both ground delaying and/or rerouting flights that were scheduled to use the problematic airspace during the time in which it is constrained. We develop a framework to compare several traffic assignment schemes, comprised of different styles of user preference inputs and resource allocation philosophies, to assign constrained airspace resources to flights as efficiently and equitably as possible. The particular focus of this work is to understand how information uncertainty/scarcity and competition can affect the resource allocation process and its performance. I employ tools such as random utility and game theory to model these effects. We also gain some insights into user behaviour and participation through simple traffic assignment and equilibrium principles.
Although my dissertation grew out of research needs identified for the AFP, the tools I employ to study the problem are applicable to a wider class of resource allocation challenges both within aviation and in other transportation modes. In particular, it may be particularly well suited to route allocation issues in oceanic airspace. Also, I am interested in incorporating other performance metrics, such as environmental (emissions) metrics and explicit equity measures, into my evaluation scheme through multi-objective optimization. Understanding and modelling the competitive aspects of this allocation process is ongoing research work area as well.
During my MS studies, I worked on a traffic simulation study for the assessment of lane management (HOV, toll) and advanced ramp metering strategies. This project was part of the earliest research in representing sophisticated ramp metering algorithms and controls, and HOV lanes, in microscopic traffic simulation models.
In the future I would like to continue my work in air transport, but also use my skills and experience to work in other transportation modes. My primary research goals are to use engineering analysis to improve our understanding of transportation systems operations, maximize performance (after deciding exactly what good performance should consist of!), and understand how results can be used to influence critical policy decisions. I am interested in studying how accessibility to public transportation modes influence our choice to travel using these modes, both on an urban as well as inter-urban scale. I believe that transportation systems will see many major changes in our generation, and I am very excited for the opportunity to work in this exciting area with so many interesting issues to understand and address.
last update 09/28/2011
I was involved in several projects throughout the course of my MS and PhD studies. At the beginning of my PhD studies I was involved in a freeway weaving analysis project, where we tested several analysis methods with data from freeway weaving sites primarily from California, but from other parts of the country as well.
My graduate work was mainly focused on transportation operations issues within aviation. Some of the projects I have and continue to work on include runway capacity analysis, delay analysis, air traffic flow management, and simulation studies. My dissertation research was focused on en route air traffic flow management issues, particularly in the context of the US National Airspace System. It investigates how we can strategically reallocate constrained en route resources during times of capacity shortfall (due to heavy demand, weather issues, special-use airspace designation, or other reasons). In particular, we investigate the problem in the context of a future version of the Airspace Flow Program (AFP). In this research, we study how reduced airspace capacity can be redistributed by both ground delaying and/or rerouting flights that were scheduled to use the problematic airspace during the time in which it is constrained. We develop a framework to compare several traffic assignment schemes, comprised of different styles of user preference inputs and resource allocation philosophies, to assign constrained airspace resources to flights as efficiently and equitably as possible. The particular focus of this work is to understand how information uncertainty/scarcity and competition can affect the resource allocation process and its performance. I employ tools such as random utility and game theory to model these effects. We also gain some insights into user behaviour and participation through simple traffic assignment and equilibrium principles.
Although my dissertation grew out of research needs identified for the AFP, the tools I employ to study the problem are applicable to a wider class of resource allocation challenges both within aviation and in other transportation modes. In particular, it may be particularly well suited to route allocation issues in oceanic airspace. Also, I am interested in incorporating other performance metrics, such as environmental (emissions) metrics and explicit equity measures, into my evaluation scheme through multi-objective optimization. Understanding and modelling the competitive aspects of this allocation process is ongoing research work area as well.
During my MS studies, I worked on a traffic simulation study for the assessment of lane management (HOV, toll) and advanced ramp metering strategies. This project was part of the earliest research in representing sophisticated ramp metering algorithms and controls, and HOV lanes, in microscopic traffic simulation models.
In the future I would like to continue my work in air transport, but also use my skills and experience to work in other transportation modes. My primary research goals are to use engineering analysis to improve our understanding of transportation systems operations, maximize performance (after deciding exactly what good performance should consist of!), and understand how results can be used to influence critical policy decisions. I am interested in studying how accessibility to public transportation modes influence our choice to travel using these modes, both on an urban as well as inter-urban scale. I believe that transportation systems will see many major changes in our generation, and I am very excited for the opportunity to work in this exciting area with so many interesting issues to understand and address.
last update 09/28/2011
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