Written by: College of Engineering August 1, 2017 Dr. Sherif Ishak joins the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department as the Department Chair and Professor. Most recently, he served as the Lloyd J. Guillory professor of Civil Engineering at Louisiana State University. He received his B.S. degree from Cairo University, Egypt, and both M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in civil engineering from the University of Central Florida. His research expertise spans the areas of intelligent transportation systems, congestion pricing and managed lanes, traffic control, traffic flow modeling, traffic safety, artificial intelligence and advanced computing applications in transportation, computer and human-in-the-loop simulation, human factors and driving behavior, and the new emerging area of connected and automated vehicles (CAV). Dr. Ishak has supervised 30 MS and PhD students to completion. He is also the founder of the Intelligent Transportation Systems lab at Louisiana Transportation Research Center and the LSU driving simulator facility. Dr. Ishak served as interim associate dean for academic programs from 2014 to 2016, and as a member of several departmental, college, and university committees and advisory boards. Dr. Ishak is the current chair of the Transportation Research Board Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Computing Applications (ABJ70). He is also a member of the five-year National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) panel for maintaining and executing a research agenda for the Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV) roadmap, a board member of the Gulf Region Intelligent Transportation Society, and an associate editor for the Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering. Dr. Leonard Petnga joins the Industrial & Systems Engineering and Engineering Management as Assistant Professor. He received his Ph.D. degree in Civil Systems from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2016. Prior to joining UAH, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and the Institute for Systems Research (ISR) at the University of Maryland. He is also a former Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) Scholar at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In 2013, he won the Best Paper Award at the 11th Annual Conference on Systems Engineering Research (CSER2013). Dr. Petnga’s research focuses on knowledge structures for MBSE and integration of complex systems with an emphasis on CPS and System of Systems (SoS). His work involves the development of procedures for modeling, reasoning and integration of system behavior and structure across domains with applications in transportation (air, ground, water), unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and Internet of Things (IoT). Dr. Tauhidur Rahman joins the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department as Assistant Professor. Dr. Rahman obtained his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2017 from University of Florida, and his M.S. degree from University of Connecticut. Dr. Rahman’s research interests include hardware security and trust, electronics supply chain security, IoT security, cybersecurity, design-for-trust, configurable security architecture, and reliable VLSI design. Dr. Rahman has published more than 23 technical journal and conference papers, including one best student paper. Dr. Guangsheng Zhang joins the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department as Assistant Professor. Dr. Zhang received his Ph.D. degree in Power Engineering and Engineering Thermophysics in 2010, B.S. degree in Thermal Energy and Power Engineering (major) and B.A. degree in English (minor) in 2003, all from Xi’an Jiaotong University, China. Prior to joining UAH, Dr. Zhang was a Research Associate (2013-2017) and a postdoctoral fellow (2011-2013) at The Pennsylvania State University in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, Electrochemical Engineering Center, and Battery & Energy Storage Technology Center. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral fellow (2010-2011) at Rochester Institute of Technology in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Zhang’s research interests lie at the intersection of thermal-fluid sciences, electrochemistry and energy conversion. The focus of his research is on the interaction between transport phenomena and reaction kinetics in electrochemical energy systems, such as batteries and fuel cells. In particular, he develops and uses in situ diagnostic methods to reveal insights into the interaction. Based on the diagnostics and insights, he designs novel control strategies and structures to address critical challenges in electrochemical energy systems including safety, thermal performance, and durability. The ultimate goal of his research is the development of safe, high-performance and reliable electrochemical energy systems for emerging applications including smart electronics, electric vehicles, aerospace and renewable energy.
