Yangtian Yin (Sky) is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in
Construction Management at Texas A&M University. Sky earned his bachelor’s
degree from Michigan State University and a master’s degree from the University
of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Sky joined the i2dEAS LAB in
August 2018. Sky’s work focuses on creating and validating novel big-data-driven
decision-support systems that may represent a vertical leap forward for researchers
and practitioners. In his doctoral dissertation research, Sky researches the development of a cyber-physical digital twinning platform that shows flood-induced roadway damages during a storm and predicts the best possible routes for accessing victims. If successful, his work will help lead to improved community hazard resilience and the development and evaluation of emerging artificial intelligence technology.
Research topic: AI-Based Roadway Digital Twinning for Flooding (AIR-FLOOD)
Xin Liu is a Ph.D.
student member who joined in the fall of 2019. Xin earned his MS in Civil Engineering from the University of
Florida in 2017 and a bachelor’s in Civil from Zhejiang University in China in 2014. Before studying abroad, Xin was an Assistant Project Manager and was involved in several
large-scale construction projects for one of the largest construction firms in
China. Xin’s research methods are specialized in BIM tools, programming on
machine-learning techniques, and statistics. Since he is new to the lab, a
specific research topic will unfold in a multidisciplinary area that blends construction management, computer science, traffic engineering, and social
science.
Research topic: Visualization of Highway Incidents Impacts through Artificial Intelligence
Wade Allen is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Construction Management at Texas A&M University (TAMU) and will be a Ph.D. student by 2023. He earned his BS degree in Geology at TAMU in 2021 and is directing his interests toward the construction engineering and management (CEM) field. He is proficient in the use of 3D modeling tools, including ArcGIS and AutoCAD, and is eager to begin conducting research to further the depth and breadth of knowledge within the CEM research domain. When taking a graduate-level class with Dr. Choi, Wade was noted as the student who sets the curve and raises the bar for all other graduate students. Research topic: Wade will lead one of the NSF projects
Dr. Jae Yong Lee has been working for 15 years in the Smart City Center, a governmental organization affiliated with the Korea Research Institute of Human Settlements (better known as ‘KRIHS’). He earned his Ph.D. in Geography from Ohio State University in 2008 and a Master of Science in Urban Planning at Texas A&M University in 2002. Dr. Lee served as director of the Smart City Center of KRIHS, a premier and pioneering smart city center that has substantially grown in visibility and prominence. His accomplishment culminates in government services: director of the Presidential Council for Future & Vision, Presidential Committee for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and member of the National Smart City Council. Currently, he serves as vice-chairman of the Seoul Smart City Committee and an expert member of the Presidential Advisory Council on Science and Technology. Dr. Lee is joining the lab as a Visiting Professor.
ATTN: We are currently (and seriously) looking for two (2) new doctoral student members with highly competitive funding packages. If you are interested in joining us, please do not hesitate to contact Dr. Choi via email. We will then get in touch with you shortly.
You Are A Sight for Sore Eyes, Alumni!
Dr. Bum Hwan Park received his BE, ME, and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Seoul National University in Seoul, S. Korea. Dr. Park is a professor at the Korea National University of Transportation. Dr. Park is an avid modeler whose research has centered around the optimization and simulation of transportation and freight infrastructure projects. His main methodologies are statistics and machine learning.
We are grateful for the time you spent together with us during your faculty development leave!
Dr. Seung Hyun Kim joined the i2dEAS LAB in the summer of 2018 as a Postdoctoral Researcher. He earned his BE, ME, and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Jeju National University in South Korea. Before going into academia, Dr. Kim worked for Samsung Engineering for five years as a project engineer. This five-year intensive industry experience has given him an opportunity to provide practical solutions to the research communities in academia and practitioners in the industry.
We are grateful for the time you spent together with us during your post-doctoral stay!
Junseo Bae is a Ph.D. student in Construction Management at Texas A&M University. He earned both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Hanyang University in South Korea. Before going into his doctoral study, he was involved in several significant research projects sponsored by major governmental agencies. Junseo joined the i2dEAS LAB in the Spring of 2012. His research creates and tests a novel machine-learning-based spatiotemporal decision-support model that learns and models the mobility impact of critical highway construction work zones based on a massive amount of unprecedented big data gathered through the large-scale deployment of traffic sensors.
Research Topic: Multi-Contextual Approach to Modeling the Impact of Critical Highway Work Zones
Current position: Assistant Professor in the School of Smart City at Korea University (Sejong)
Kyeong Rok “Chris” Ryu is a Ph.D. student in Construction Management at Texas A&M University. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Chung-Ang University and a Master’s degree in Finance from Sogang University in South Korea. He has an extensive five-year professional experience as an asset manager with GE Capital Real Estate Co. and Korea Real Estate Investment Trust Co. (KOREIT). His research is currently focusing on developing a quantitative model that can predict contractors’ bidding behavior and their winning bidding mechanism. Joined i2dEAS LAB in the Fall of 2014.
Research topic: Contractors' bidding behavior and award mechanisms for transportation infrastructure projects.
Current position: Assistant Professor in the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Arlington
Ankit Joshi is a graduate student in Construction Management at Texas A&M University. Mr. Joshi received his Bachelor's degree (BE) in Civil engineering from the Sanghvi Institute of Management & Science, India in 2012. Following his graduation, he worked as a Civil Engineer on several commercial projects with Gannon & Dunkerly Construction Limited, one of the largest construction companies in India. Mr. Joshi played an important role in building a mega project where India’s largest public transit transportation system was successfully constructed. Joined the LAB in the Fall of 2013.
Research Topic: Fair Allocation of Transportation Rehabilitation Funds Using Fair Division Method.
Mohammed Yaqoob Khan is a MS student, currently attempting to explore the applications of big data fused from connected vehicles (CV), for the sake of improving transportation planning and management. Since big-data-driven research applications from CV are deemed still new, his study fills this gap of knowledge by identifying potential obstacles and providing forward-thinking directions about the use of CV-big-data analytics, applications, and implementation strategies. He earned his BE degree in Civil Engineering from Osmania University, India, in 2016. At Texas A&M, he pursues a Master of Science degree in Construction Management. Joined i2dEAS LAB in the Fall of 2016.
Research topic: Use of big data through connected vehicles in transportation planning and management.
Jayakrishnan “JK” Radhakrishnan is a Construction Management majoring graduate student at Texas A&M University, College Station. He received his BA degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, and is a licensed architect in India. He was an Assistant Architect at Total Environment Building Systems in India, with two years of experience in residential design and construction. His current research is focused on the investigation of risks inherent in innovative project delivery systems like design-build and IPD.
Research Topic: Investigating risks inherent in innovative project delivery systems: DB vs IPD
Vanshdeep Parmar received his bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering in 2012 with honorable first-class distinction from India`s premier institution "Uttarakhand Technical University”. Upon completion of this study, he was able to acquire diverse work experiences for two years in the field of transmission & distribution of electrical power and renewable projects. His research study investigates the effectiveness of solar power energy over natural gas choice from the view of the cost-benefit analysis.
Research Topic: Benefit-cost analysis of adopting solar power: is photovoltaic technology really effective?
Abhishek Shete is a graduate student in Construction Management at Texas A&M University. He was born and grew up in Pune, India. Mr. Shete received his B.E. in Civil Engineering from Pune University, India, in 2014. He then worked as an intern on several residential projects due to his childhood interest and family-own construction business. He envisions growing and expanding his own construction company at a top-notch level and internationally well-recognized.
Research Topic: Use of smart tablet devices for paperless work and communication among Project Stakeholders
Rohan Nimbai is a graduate student in the COMG program at TAMU. He graduated from the University of Pune in India. His research examines the impact of office outfit changes on determining recurring embodied energy. In this study, he creates an embodied energy computation algorithm for that purpose.
Research Topic: Measuring office outfit changes to determine recurring embodied energy in building life-cycle assessment
Nelson Han holds his BS degree in Landscape Architecture from Cal Poly University at Pomona. Before joining the lab, he was an Assistant Project Manager of a GC company for two years; mostly involved in commercial projects situated in California. His expertise includes project controls, cost estimates, submittal preparations, and project scheduling.
Research Topic: Quantifying Causes, Schedule, and Cost Impacts of Change Orders: Are Alternative Technical Concepts Really Effective?”
Current position: Project Control Engineer at Bechtel (Oil & Gas) Corporation in Houston, TX
Hyunsoung Park, a graduate student majoring in Construction Management at Texas A&M University, earned his Bachelor’s degree in Architectural Engineering from Hongik University in S. Korea. He joined the LAB in the Spring of 2013. He is interested in life-cycle assessments of infrastructure construction alternatives. Joined the lab in the Fall of 2012.
Research Topic: Life-Cycle Assessment of Fast-Setting Asphalt Concrete Pavement Alternatives.
Current position: Assistant Professor at the University of Evansville
Shashank Tiwari joined the i2dEAS LAB in the Spring of 2012 while pursuing his MS degree in Construction Management. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IITD), India. During his study at IIT in Delhi, he worked as an intern assisting a project engineer involved in three different construction sites of a large-scale cable-stay bridge project. His research has centered on modeling road user costs heterogeneously. He is a huge fan of cricket regularly watching and playing.
Research Topic: Estimating road user costs with heterogeneous values of travelers’ time
Current position: Working in India
Piyush Sharma is currently pursuing his Master’s degree in Construction Management at Texas A&M University. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, India. After completing his Bachelor’s degree, he worked as a Project Engineer with DLF Ltd, India’s biggest real estate firm, in the field of project controls for four years. He attained extensive experience both in commercial and residential projects, focused mainly on on-site engineering, billing, planning, and procurement aspects. After gaining an extensive hands-on experience in large-scale construction projects, he started the second phase of his life as a graduate student researcher at Texas A&M.
Research Topic: Decision-support model for quantifying the most realistic incentives/disincentives dollar amounts.
Current position: Morris-Shea Bridge Company
Ankit Gaur is a graduate student majoring in construction management at TAMU. He earned his bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Jaypee University of Engineering And Technology in India. After that, having realized that expertise in construction management would be in great demand in India’s rapidly growing infrastructure and construction industry, he decided to study construction management in the US and bring that expertise back to India. In his study at i2dEAS LAB, he leads the project delivery initiative by exploring various innovative project delivery and alternative contracting concepts. His study investigates the effectiveness of those concepts on aspects of project performance such as schedule, cost and change. Research Topic: Holistic approach to analyzing project performance of fast-tracked projects.
Current position: Working in India
Yoo Hyun Kim joined the TAMU
construction management program in the Fall of 2010 to pursue his Master's degree in the Construction Science Department. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Architectural Engineering from
Hongik University in South Korea in 1998. He has had various professional experiences
as an architectural engineer, project manager, and design manager with Daewoo
E&C for six years. His research was focused on developing a decision-support model for quantifying the future maintenance costs of flexible-type highway construction projects in order to help state transportation agencies perform a life-cycle cost analysis in a more viable way.
Research Topic: Life-cycle cost
analysis model for predicting future highway maintenance costs
Current position: Cost Control Manager at Daewoo E&C, currently managing Malaysia's Public Bank Project
Parth Arora received his MS degree in August 2012 in Construction Management with a Business Administration Certificate offered by Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from BITS Pilani, India. Parth has diverse working experiences as a project controls specialist on several federally-funded projects in the United States and as a civil engineer, he was involved in the Delhi Metro Rail Project, one of the biggest infrastructure projects in India.
Research Topic: Macroeconomic study of construction firm’s profitability using cluster analysis
Current position: Consultant at Strategic Project Solutions, Inc. in San Francisco, CA
Zhuting Mao's research has focused on the life-cycle assessment of rigid pavement alternatives. She also worked as a Teaching Assistant, leading the labs and giving lectures to more than 150 undergraduate students under the supervision of Professor Choi. She received her master's degree in Construction Management in the summer of 2012 with the honorable Regents’ Graduate Fellowship.
Research Topic: Life-cycle assessment of highway pavement alternatives
Current position: BIM specialist at Balfour Beatty Construction in San Diego, CA
Fernando J. Manrique earned his MS degree in December 2012 and a BS in Civil Engineering from Universidad Rafael Urdaneta, Maracaibo, Venezuela. After completing his Bachelor’s degree, he worked as a Field Engineer and Specialist on Project Controls in Promociones y Desarrollos MG2005, a Venezuelan real estate developing company. Fernando has a variety of construction experiences including commercial and real estate development projects.
Research Topic: Innovating contracting strategies-implications of project changes
Current position: Project Engineer at Southland Industries in Texas
Saher Zunaira, graduated in the Spring of 2011 and currently working in a Houston-based construction company.
Current position: Working in a construction company in Houston, TX.
Lishan Li (Mia Li) joined the lab in the spring of 2013 from Qingdao Technological University in China where she received her Bachelor’s degree in Project Management. Mia is currently pursuing a MS in Construction Management with the certificate of Business offered by May's Business School at Texas A &M University. She analyzes macro- and microeconomic characteristics of the A/E/C industry as a whole and at 14 of its sub-sectors in terms of labor productivity and gross margin. In her thesis, she's developing a cluster-driven non-linear regression model that captures a firm's future profitability by analyzing various affecting factors.
Current position:
Prateek Tare is currently pursuing his master's degree in Construction Management at Texas A&M University. He joined the Lab in the Fall of 2012. He earned his Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from IES IPS Academy in India in 2012. He has an in-depth internship experience with the Construction Industry Development Council and was involved in a multi-million mixed-use township construction project under EMAAR-MGF in India. He wants to develop his career in the heavy civil industry. His thesis has focused on developing, testing, and validating a new novel project prioritization algorithm for effectively allocating transportation funds.
Current position: Working in a construction company in Austin, TX.
