Great Problems Great Minds Seminar Series: Initiatives and Research Toward Sustainable Air Mobility

Join the Social Sciences Colloquium at the Department of Social Sciences for this Great Problems, Great Minds seminar series event featuring guest speaker Yu Zhang, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida (USF). She will present a talk on “Initiatives and Research towards Sustainable Air Mobility.” This seminar will take place on September 15 from 3:15–4:30 p.m. via Zoom. This event is open to the public.

Abstract

“Initiatives and Research towards Sustainable Air Mobility” will explore initiatives to make aviation more sustainable and the research that will help to evaluate and demonstrate the benefits of the initiatives. This presentation will introduce several projects accomplished by the Smart Urban Mobility Laboratory at the University of South Florida, including reducing aircraft taxi delay impacts, the environmental impact analysis of emerging advanced air mobility, and the equity issue of emerging technologies and business models. This talk will also introduce a future multimodal transportation system that takes advantage of emerging technologies and coordinated connectivity.

Bio

Yu Zhang leads the Smart Urban Mobility Laboratory and serves as the director of the National Institute for Congestion Reduction, a United States Department of Transportation Fast Act National University Transportation Center. She is also the program director of Advanced Air Mobility at the Center for Urban Transportation Research at USF. Zhang develops mathematical programming and solution algorithms, simulation tools, econometrics and statistical models, and machine learning/deep learning methods for obtaining innovative solutions for more efficient, resilient, and sustainable multimodal transportation systems. Her recent efforts focus on emerging services and technologies in transportation, including advanced air mobility and automated, connected, electrified, and shared transportation. She has published scholarly articles on these topics in top journals, such as the Journal of Air Transport Management, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, and Sustainable Cities and Society. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Education, the Transportation Research Board, the Florida Department of Transportation, the city of Tampa, and the city of St. Petersburg. She holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in civil and environmental engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor’s degree in transportation engineering from Southeast University of China.

This event is part of the Great Problems, Great Minds seminar series which explores the major problems facing humanity as we move into the heart of the twenty-first century. To see the full schedule and videos from previous events, visit the seminar series page. For more information, contact Associate Professor of Social Sciences Hao Huang at hhuang48@iit.edu.

Join Zoom