TeQson Laboratory at UT-Austin

renee.alsup@gmail.com

B.S. - University of Texas - Austin, 2008

Renee began working with Dr. Waller as an undergraduate research assistant in the spring 2008 semester. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in May 2008 and began her graduate studies that fall. Renee is currently working toward her M.S. and is interested in evacuation planning and accounting for drivers' perception and behavior in an evacuation scenario. Renee is involved in the TxDOT IAC project, focusing on accurately modeling the transit network.

davidf@mail.utexas.edu

B.S. - University of Texas - Austin, 2005

David began working with our group as an NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) undergraduate research assistant and began his graduate studies in 2005. His research interests include search and rescue algorithms from a stochastic and dynamic vehicle routing perspective. as well as time dependent minimum spanning trees. David is involved in the TxDOT project "Ramp Treatment and Dynamic Closure Strategies for Incident Traffic Management" and the NSF project "CAREER: Accounting for Information and Recourse in the Robust Design and Optimization of Stochastic Transportation Networks".

Erin Ferguson - M.S. Student

ferguson.em@gmail.com

B.S. – University of Portland – Portland, OR, 2005

Erin came to the University of Texas at Austin in Fall 2008 to begin her master’s degree in transportation engineering. She completed her Bachelors of Science in Civil Engineering in 2005 from the University of Portland. During the three years from May 2005 to July 2008, Erin worked for a transportation engineering and planning consulting firm named Kittelson & Associates, Inc.. Prior to arriving at the University of Texas at Austin, Erin was engaged in a variety of transportation projects ranging from corridor planning projects, intersection and roadway design, environmental impact studies, and safety analysis. Her current research interests include network optimization under constrained conditions and system evaluation from a multimodal perspective. Erin is currently involved in two TxDOT research projects. The first is investigating the potential effectiveness and feasibility of speed harmonization and peak period shoulder use on Texas freeways as a means to ease congestion and improve system performance. The second is developing a sketch-planning tool capable of estimating emissions impacts due to large-scale transportation projects.

*Lauren Gardner - Ph.D. Student

lmgardner@mail.utexas.edu

B.S. - University of Texas - Austin, 2006

Lauren began working with our group as an NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) undergraduate research assistant. She graduated with a B.S. in Architectural Engineering and began her graduate studies in 2006. She completed her M.S. in 2008, and a Thesis entitled "Solution Methods for Robust Pricing for Transportation Networks Under Demand Uncertainty". Lauren's current research focuses on cascading failures in complex infrastructure networks, and disease modeling in stochastic social networks. Lauren is a recipient of the Eisenhower Fellowship, and is involved in the TxDOT project "Quantifying the Effects of Network Improvement Actions on the Value of New and Existing Toll Road Projects" and the NSF project "CAREER: Accounting for Information and Recourse in the Robust Design and Optimization of Stochastic Transportation Networks".

Nan Jiang - Ph.D. Student

nanjiang@mail.utexas.edu

B.S. – Huazhong University of Sci. & Tech. – Wuhan, China, 2006

M.S. – Tongji University – Shanghai, China, 2009

Nan joined our group in Fall 2009 to begin her Ph.D. degree in Transportation Engineering. She completed her Bachelors of Science in Traffic Engineering in 2006 from Huazhong University of Science & Technology and obtained master degree in Transportation Engineering in 2009 from Tongji University. During her undergraduate and master study in transportation program, Nan was engaged in a variety of transportation projects ranging from parking planning, intersection and roadway design, intersection and ramp control, and transportation system simulation. Her current research interests include network design and optimization under uncertainty and dynamic conditions with information. She is now involved in TxDOT? project "Safety Implications of Using Active Traffic Strategies on TxDOT? Freeways".

Deepak Kumar - Ph.D. Student

dkumar@mail.utexas.edu

M.S. - University of Texas - Austin, 2004

B.S. - IIT Guwahati, 2002

Deepak started UIUC in fall 2002 after completing his B.S. at IIT Guwahati. He transferred to UT-Austin in fall 2003. Currently, he is developing stochastic time-dependent shortest path algorithms with constraints. Such algorithms are critical in applications where minimum cost paths are desirable but must meet some additional criteria (such as maximum travel time, route cost variance, risk, etc). Deepak is involved in the TxDOT project "Evaluation of Dynamic Ramp Closure Strategies".

Roshan Kumar - Ph.D. Student

roshan@mail.utexas.edu

M.S. - University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2008

B.S. - VJTI, Mumbai, 2006

Roshan joined our group in 2008 as a Ph.D. student after completing his MS in Operations Research at UNC-Chapel Hill. His current research interests include Network Flow Problems, Vehicle Routing Problems, Deterministic Modeling and Dynamic Programming. He is involved in TxDOT projects 0-6235 and 0-6487.He is also involved in the SWUTC project titled: "Network Methods for Project Selection Based on Optimizing Environmental Impact".

ManWo Ng - Ph.D. Student

mwng@mail.utexas.edu

M.S. - Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, 2005

B.S. - Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, 2002

Ng is a doctoral student who came to UT after completing his BS in Mechanical Engineering and MS in Applied Mathematics (Cum Laude). He began at UT on a preemptive fellowship in the operations research group of mechanical engineering in 2005 but joined our group in fall 2006.

Nezamuddin - Ph.D. Student

M.S. - University of Central Florida, 2006

B.S. - IIT Delhi, 2003

Nezamuddin joined UT, Austin in Spring 2008 as a transfer student from the University of Maryland. He is interested in network modeling and traffic flow theory. He is currently involved in the TxDOT project "Feasibility of Speed Harmonization and Peak-period Shoulder Use to Manage Urban Freeway Congestion".

Natalia Ruiz Juri - Ph.D. Student

nruizjuri@mail.utexas.edu

http://transnet1.ce.utexas.edu/Public/NataliaRuiz

M.S. - The University of Texas - Austin, 2004

B.S. - National University of Cordoba, Argentina, 2001

Natalia Ruiz completed her undergraduate studies in Civil Engineering in 2001 at the National University of Cordoba, in Argentina. She has construction-related work experience as well as research and teaching experience as an R.A in the Superior Institute of Traffic Engineering (Cordoba, Argentina). Natalia joined the transportation program at The University of Texas at Austin as a Fulbright scholar in Fall 2002. she obtained her Master's degree working in integrated land-use and transportation issues in Fall 2004, joining Dr. Waller's research group immediately afterwards. Natalia is involved in the NSF project "CAREER: Accounting for Information and Recourse in the Robust Design and Optimization of Stochastic Transportation Networks", and in the TxDOT projects "Development of Freeway Traffic Time Prediction Capability in Conjunction with Detector Coverage Analysis" and "Feasibility of Speed Harmonization and Peak-period Shoulder Use to Manage Urban Freeway Congestion". She is also a recipient of the Tuition Fellowship award. For her dissertation, Natalia is analyzing the impacts of real time wireless-based information on the optimization of networks under uncertainty. She expects that the results of her work will be applicable to problems such as emergency management, evacuation, and optimal sensor/probe deployment for decision support.

David Suescun -Ph.D. Student

davidsuescun@mail.utexas.edu

M.S. (Engineering) - The University of Texas - Austin, 2007

M.A. (Economics) - Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, 2007

B.S. (Civil Engineering)- Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia

David is interested in transportation network modeling, transportation economics, game theory, and econometrics. He was recently involved in the development of a network-based valuation tool for toll roads. David is currently working on route choice modeling under network disruption.

Ti Zhang - Ph.D. Student

tizhang@mail.utexas.edu

B.S. – Shanghai Jiaotong University – Shanghai, China, 2007

M.S. – Rutgers University- New Brunswick, NJ, 2009

Ti joined the transportation program at University of Texas at Austin in Fall 2009. She completed her bachelor’s in transportation (International Shipping) from Shanghai Jiaotong University and her master’s degree in transportation engineering from Rutgers University. Prior to arriving at UT Austin, Ti’s research focused on freight transportation, including trucks scheduling at cross-docks, facility location-allocation problems. Her current research interests include network optimization and logistics. Ti is currently involved in a TxDOT? project to develop a performance measurement based methodology to compare operations improvements. .