Graduate Students

Will Barbour

William Barbour is a doctoral student in Civil Engineering at Vanderbilt University. He earned his M.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his B.S. in Biosystems Engineering from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he graduated summa cum laude with distinction from the Chancellor’s Honors Program and the Haslam Scholars Program. William has work experience from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and CSX Transportation. He has also received graduate funding support from the Roadway Safety Institute and Federal Highway Administration.

William’s career and research interests focus on the application of novel and advanced computational techniques to transportation systems engineering; examples include big data analytics, machine learning, optimization, and artificial intelligence. He has applied these interests in the freight rail transportation domain through ongoing industry collaboration with Class I railroads, where improvements in network operations can lead to capacity and efficiency gains for the system. William’s other domain interests include pedestrian and cyclist accessibility, public transit planning, and transportation policy.

Please see William’s personal website: https://barbourww.github.io

Charles Doktycz

Charles Doktycz, is a doctoral student in Civil Engineering at Vanderbilt University. He earned his M.S. degree in Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt University and a B.S. in Chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Prior to coming to Vanderbilt I was researching at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the Organic and Biological Mass Spectroscopy Group.

Current research interests include risk assessment of infrastructure systems impacted by severe weather as a result of climate change. I am interested in using loss and damage data to fuel a business case for climate change adaptation measures.

Andrea Gardiner

Andrea Resch Gardiner, PE, is a doctoral student in Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt University. She received a B.S. in Environmental Engineering from California Poly Technic State University, San Luis Obispo and a M.S. in Environmental Science and Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. Before coming to Vanderbilt, Andrea worked in California, Colorado, and Tennessee for a variety of engineering consulting firms such as URS, TRC, ERM, and Tetra Tech. She holds her Professional Civil Engineering License in CA, TN, AL, and GA. Additionally, Andrea operated her own environmental consulting firm. She currently works as an Environmental Consultant for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Division of Solid Waste.

Andrea’s research interests include life cycle assessment (LCA) as related to waste management and freight operations and their role in decision making methodologies. She is developing ways to assess the impact of systems on the environment to allow for better resource management, sustainability and resilience.

Pam Hoover

Pam Hoover, P.E. is a doctoral student in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Vanderbilt University. She earned a B.S in Environmental Science and M.S. in Environmental and Water Resource Engineering from Vanderbilt. In addition to being a part-time graduate student, Pam works for AquAeTer, Inc., an environmental engineering firm. Pam’s research has included an analysis of the CO₂ emissions from paper and electronic document usage. Her current research interest is in the development of resilient community systems. In particular, her research involves assessing the relationship between weather, water quality, and water treatment processes to inform decision making by water treatment utility management. Pam is a member of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s Harmful Algal Bloom Working Group.

Miguel Moravec

Miguel Moravec is a doctoral student in Civil Engineering at Vanderbilt University. Prior to returning to Vanderbilt, Miguel worked at U.S. EPA as a member of the Chemical Safety for Sustainability National Research Program. Miguel has additional professional experience with U.S. Navy, U.S. NOAA, an

d Nissan North America. Miguel received his B.A. in Earth Science and Science Communication from Vanderbilt University in 2018, where he graduated with Departmental Honors, Student Marshal distinction, and a minor in Physics.

Miguel’s academic interests include leveraging agent-based modeling and data analytics to evaluate the impacts of climate change on transportation networks, especially as they relate to decision-making in the maritime domain. In his free time, Miguel is an avid sailor who enjoys generating his own maritime data points while competing in long-distance offshore races.

Please see Miguel’s personal website: https://miguel-moravec.github.io/

Yue Hu

Yue Hu is a doctoral student in Civil Engineering and the Institute for Software Integrated Systems at Vanderbilt University. She earned her M.S. in Systems Engineering at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in University of California at Berkeley. She earned her B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Tongji University, China.

Yue’s research interest lies in transportation cyber physical systems and sustainable resilient infrastructure systems. Her work focus on the application of Machine Learning and Optimization techniques on transportation systems.

Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson is a doctoral student in Environmental Engineering, Management, and Policy at Vanderbilt University, an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program that integrates social and technical systems to address environmental challenges. Prior to coming to Vanderbilt, Paul was a business manager for the Decision Sciences team at Capital One Financial. He received his M.S. in Engineering Management from Duke University and graduated summa cum laude from Georgia Tech with a B.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering.

Paul’s research interests include climate change impacts on transportation networks, trends in U.S. agricultural yields, spatiotemporal relationships of extreme weather events, and risk management strategies for natural and manmade disasters. He is also an avid tennis player and heavily involved with the club team at Vanderbilt.

Andrew Stanford

Andrew Stanford is a doctoral student in Civil Engineering at Vanderbilt University. He received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from the Virginia Military Institute in May 2016. Andrew’s research interests include Infrastructure Risk and Resilience, Multi-Modal Transportation Integration and Optimization and Transportation Policy research. Prior to Vanderbilt, Andrew conducted research on Dynamic Shear Key Deflection Responses, Ultra-Short Pulse Laser Telecommunications and the Insulin-Glucose Feedback System of Diabetics.

Prior to Vanderbilt, Andrew worked for the Virginia Department of Transportation as a Maintenance and Land Use Engineer in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He was primarily focused on bringing new developments into the State network, maintaining current infrastructure and working with various stakeholders to facilitate project deliverables. Andrew is currently part of the Kentucky National Guard serving as a Platoon Leader with the 116^th Infantry Brigade Combat Team.

Yanbing Wang

Yanbing Wang is a doctoral student in Civil Engineering and the Institute for Software Integrated Systems at Vanderbilt University. She earned a B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2018 from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During her undergraduate studies, she co-founded a non-profit organization, Bridges to Prosperity, and helped rural communities in Guatemala and Panama construct pedestrian bridges that allow safe access to local amenities.

Yanbing’s research interests focus on estimation and control of dynamical systems and data assimilation. She has applied these techniques on modeling and estimating complex traffic flows that involve micro-mobility modes, and adaptive cruise controlled vehicles. Yanbing is also interested in smart-city technologies such as urban-scaled sensing and big data analytics.

Jinzhu Yu

Jinzhu Yu is a doctoral student working with Dr. Hiba Baroud in the Department of Civil Engineering at Vanderbilt University. He received his BS and MS degrees in Civil Engineering from Tongji University, China in 2013 and 2016, respectively.

Jinzhu’s research interest lies in analyzing risk and resilience of critical infrastructures and he is currently working on hierarchical Bayesian kernel (HBK) techniques to assess the recoverability of infrastructure networks