Recent Advances in Skid Resistance and Safety
Reginald Kogbara
Dr. Reginald Kogbara is an Assistant Research Scientist at Texas A&M University at Qatar. He holds a PhD in Engineering (Geotechnical & Environmental) from the University of Cambridge, UK, and a Bachelor of Technology degree in Agricultural & Environmental Engineering from the Rivers State University of Science & Technology, Nigeria. He has published over 35 refereed journal articles in the areas of civil engineering materials and geo-environmental engineering. His research interests include skid resistance of asphalt pavements, cement and concrete technology, materials characterization, non-destructive evaluation and geo-environmental engineering (soil stabilization and waste treatment technologies).
Kumar Anupam
Dr. Anupam graduated from the department of civil engineering of Indian Institute of technology, Roorkee, India. Immediately after graduation, he worked as structural design Engineer in India for two years. In the late 2006, he joined the faculty of Civil Engineering and Environment at National University of Singapore as PhD research scholar. Since 2012 he is working in the Section of Pavement Engineering, led by Prof. Tom Scarpas. He participated in several projects mainly related but not limited to tire-pavement interaction.He is also actively involved in organizing international courses, workshops and conferences. He was one of the lecturers during a successfully concluded international course on "Micromechanical analysis of Asphalt Concrete" in June 2015.
Tianchi Tang
Mr. Tang graduated from South China University of Technology with Bachelor degree in civil engineering in 2012. After graduation, he worked as a civil engineer in Singapore for nearly two years. In September 2014, he went to UK to pursue the joint Master degree in structural engineering and mechanics at University of Glasgow and The University of Edinburgh. Since October 2015, he has been working in the Group of Pavement Engineering, led by Prof. Tom Scarpas.
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Emad Kassem
Dr. Emad Kassem is an assistant professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Idaho (UI). He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University. Prior to joining the University of Idaho, he was an Associate Research Scientist at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. His area of research is materials and pavements engineering and focuses on characterization of pavement materials, tire-pavement interaction, microstructure analysis of composite materials, non-destructive evaluation of pavements, multifunctional materials, and analytical and computational modeling of infrastructure materials. Dr. Kassem has about 15 years of experience in the area of materials and pavements engineering. He has more than 70 technical publications, conference papers, presentations, and reports in the field of materials and pavements engineering. He received the Texas A&M Transportation Institute/Trinity New Researcher Award in 2011 and the Engineers’ Council Outstanding Engineering Achievement Merit Award in 2016.
Bituminous Materials Characterization 101: Basics and Recent Advances
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Shane Underwood
Dr. Shane Underwood is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University. Prior to this appointment he was an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at Arizona State University. He received his doctorate degree in Civil Engineering from North Carolina State University December of 2011. Dr. Underwood’s primary area of expertise is in transportation infrastructure and materials. Broadly, his research focuses on materials and their interaction with society and the natural and built environments in order to better engineer infrastructure that consumes less energy, maximizes material resources, reduces environmental impacts, and increases productivity. He and his students pursue this goal by using experimental mechanics to understand and model asphalt materials and systems studies to understand the role of climate and other boundary conditions on pavement performance. His work has been published in more than 65 peer reviewed journal papers and he has spoken at various national and international venues on topics related to pavements and paving materials.
Traffic Characterization for Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design
Ala R. Abbas
Dr. Ala R. Abbas is a Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Akron. His specialties include infrastructure materials and pavement engineering. Prior to joining the University of Akron, he worked at the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center (TFHRC) in McLean, VA, as a Highway Research Fellow from January 2003 until July 2004, and as a Highway Research Engineer from October 2004 until August 2005. Dr. Abbas is the recipient of several prestigious awards including The University of Akron, College of Engineering Outstanding Researcher Award for the year 2018, the Eisenhower Graduate Research Fellowship Award in Transportation Engineering (one out of 15 nationally) for the years 2002-2004, and the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) Excellence in Civil Engineering Education (ExCEEd) Award for the year 2009. Dr. Abbas has been a PI or Co-PI on more than $3,000,000 of external research grants from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT). The work of Dr. Abbas has been presented in several conferences and accepted for publication in several refereed journals including the Journal of the Transportation Research Board, International Journal of Pavement Engineering, Journal of the Association of Asphalt Paving Technologists, the American Society of Civil Engineers Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering, the American Standards for Testing and Materials Journal of Testing and Evaluation, the Journal of Construction and Building Materials, and the ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering.