In early December, the Institute for Cyber Physical Infrastructure & Energy (I-CPIE) hosted a technical research seminar by Dr. Alireza Khani, Assistant Professor of Civil, Environment, and Geo- Engineering at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Dr. Khani’s research focuses on modeling equilibrium, routing, and optimization in the context of transportation networks. His work, which is primarily sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Minnesota Department of Transportation, is applicable to the evaluation of current and future transportation systems with autonomous vehicles and shared mobility, including impacts to public transit systems.
Dr. Khani is currently collaborating with an interdisciplinary Lehigh research team that is exploring smart infrastructure for connected communities. The team includes researchers from Lehigh’s P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, College of Business, and College of Arts and Sciences, as well as partners from industry, national labs, and other universities. Since Dr. Khani joined the team in 2017, the University of Minnesota Twin Cities has collaborated with Lehigh on several National Science Foundation and Department of Energy proposals.
Drawing on his expertise as a transportation engineer, Dr. Khani’s seminar, Modeling and Optimization of Transportation Systems with Emerging Technologies, shared the challenges and opportunities of mobility-on-demand services. He discussed the need for new travel modeling and evaluation methods given emerging technologies, like shared mobility and autonomous vehicles, as well as the infrastructure needs for autonomous, mobility-on-demand services and the interaction of mobility-on-demand services with public transit.
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For more information about Dr. Khani’s research: http://www.cege.umn.edu/directory/faculty-directory/khani.html
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For more information about I-CPIE’s smart infrastructure research thrust, visit: https://icpie.lehigh.edu/research/smart-infrastructure-connected-communities
