Hiba Baroud Dr. Hiba Baroud is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Littlejohn Dean’s Faculty Fellow. Her work explores data analytics and statistical methods to measure and analyze the risk, reliability, and resilience in critical infrastructure systems. In particular, she has studied data-driven Bayesian methods to predict the occurrence of disruptive events in infrastructure systems and stochastically model the recovery process of the physically disrupted system as well as other interdependent and indirectly impacted systems. She also developed decision analysis tools to assess different preparedness and recovery investment strategies for the protection of civil infrastructures.Dr. Baroud holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Oklahoma. She has a Master of Mathematics from the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo where she focused in her research on the application of statistics, particularly time series models, to analyze financial data. Prior to that, she obtained her B.S. in Actuarial Science from Notre Dame University, Lebanon.In the summer of 2013, she had an internship with IBM at the Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY, and she spent the summers of 2014 and 2015 at the Summer Doctoral Institute organized by the Center for International Business Education and Research at the George Washington University. In Fall 2014, she was a visiting student scholar in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, working with the Guikema Research Group.Her work has twice been awarded the Best Paper Award in the Homeland Security Track of the Industrial and Systems Engineering Research Conference. In 2013, she was the recipient of the Student Merit Award of the Engineering and Infrastructure Specialty Group of the Society for Risk Analysis, she discusses one aspect of her research in this video that was produced for the award.
Dr. Baroud is the U.S. Alternate Representative in the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure (PIANC) Task Group 193. She is also part of the Infrastructure Resilience Division (IRD) in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). She is a member of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), and the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA).
 Paul Johnson (co-advised with Mark Abkowitz)
Paul Johnson is a postdoctoral scholar in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt. He received his Ph.D. 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. |
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 Xueqi Cheng
Research interests: Critical infrastructure systems, machine learning, dynamic network, optimization, risk and resilience. Xueqi started his doctoral studies in Civil Engineering with a focus on Critical Infrastructure Systems in Fall 2021. Before joining Vanderbilt, he received a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from Southwest Jiaotong University, China in 2018 and a M.S.E degree in Civil Engineering from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2019. His previous research focused on performance-based wind engineering and application of novel technologies (including algorithms, materials, and digital technologies) in civil engineering. His work has been published in journals and conferences. During his doctoral studies, he will focus on the intersection of dynamic network and machine learning, with the objective to improve the resilience of urban community. Xueqi is a huge sports fan. He has been rooting for Los Angeles Lakers and Manchester United for more than 15 years. During his spare time, he loves to play with his cat, play video games and watch movies. |
 Tharindu de Silva
Research interests: Risk and resilience of infrastructure systems, Uncertainty quantification, Machine learning Tharindu joined Vanderbilt University in Fall 2021 for his doctoral studies. He obtained his BSc degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2014 and a Post Graduate Diploma in Industrial Automation in 2017 from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. In 2021, he completed a master’s degree in Energy Management from the Open University of Sri Lanka. Before joining Vanderbilt, Tharindu used to work as a Senior Mechanical Engineer for different power plants the Ceylon Electricity Board. Before that, he worked at the South terminal of Colombo Harbor. The experience he gained across different infrastructure sectors picked his interest in studying risk and resilience of critical infrastructure. Tharindu enjoys playing and watching cricket. He also likes to explore new places whenever he gets an opportunity. |
 Rajesh Kandel
Research interest: Critical Infrastructure Systems, Machine learning, Risk Analysis, Arctic Navigation, Climate change Rajesh started his doctoral studies in Civil Engineering in Spring 2021. His current research is focused on the application of data-driven approaches in the risk analysis of Arctic Maritime Navigation. Rajesh completed his M.S. in Water Resources Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and his B.E. in Civil Engineering from Kathmandu University, Nepal. His master’s thesis focused on the comparative study of water quality models in predicting nutrient loading in midwestern rivers. Prior to joining Baroud Research Group, Rajesh worked in water distribution network modeling and risk assessment of municipal water distribution system for the City of Tacoma, Washington. Rajesh spent a year at EPFL, Switzerland for a research internship during which he started learning the French language. He is constantly on the lookout for opportunities to upgrade his French skills. Rajesh is a huge soccer fan, and loves watching and playing soccer. He likes long-distance running. In his spare time, he enjoys watching test cricket. |
 Celine Wehbe
Research Interests: data science, disaster management, risk and resilience of infrastructure systems. Celine joined the Ph.D. program in Civil Engineering at Vanderbilt in Fall 2021. Her research currently focuses on quantifying the resilience of infrastructure systems to natural hazards. Before joining Vanderbilt, she received a B.E. in Civil & Environmental Engineering from Notre Dame University, Louaize, Lebanon, as well as a Minor in Engineering Management. As an undergraduate student, Celine has done research in structural engineering to relate the full stress-strain response of concrete cylinders to prisms under compression. During Summer 2019, she joined the Association of Forests, Development and Conservation (AFDC) to discuss resilient cities, sustainable development, and transportation. In Fall 2020, she was awarded an Erasmus+ grant to spend a semester in Portugal where she took courses that primarily focused on transportation engineering and sustainability. During Summer 2020, she participated in Engineering World Health, a virtual exchange program to learn about conceptual design, functional architecture and entrepreneurship. When she is not working, Celine enjoys hiking, biking, watching tv shows, and learning new languages. |
 Charles Doktycz (co-advised with Mark Abkowitz)
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. |
 Soyeon Park
Research Interests: data science, disaster management |
 Abdullah Nassar
Major: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Interests: Data science and Machine learning Abdullah Nassar is an electrical engineering third year student at Vanderbilt University. He has a strong passion for technology and using it to solve the world's problems. |
 Tobias Houghton
Research interests: risk and resilience of infrastructure systems, data science, water resources, flood modelling Toby is a senior civil engineering student at Vanderbilt University. He is interested in studying hazards to infrastructure systems especially due to flooding. Following graduation, he hopes to pursue a doctoral degree and help vulnerable communities prepare for risks presented by climate change and increased urbanization. |
Postdoctoral Fellows
 Amirhassan Kermanshah
Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering, Sharif University of Technology |
 Sayyed Mohsen Vazirizade
Current Position: Sr. Reliability Data Scientist, Rivian |
Phd Students
 Andrea Resch Gardiner
Research interests: life cycle assessment (LCA), municipal solid waste management, arctic freight operations, decision analysis Current Position: Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering at Tennessee State University |
 Jinzhu Yu
Research interests: Hierarchical Bayesian modeling, risk and resilience of infrastructure systems, community resilience modeling, Bayesian networks, statistical learning Current Position: Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic institute |
 Daniel Perrucci
Research interests: infrastructure resilience, sustainable methods/design, disaster preparedness, relief, and recovery Current Position: Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering Technology at Alfred State College - SUNY |
Paul Johnson (co-advised with Mark Abkowitz)
Research interests: 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 Current Position: Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt |
Master's Students
 Mackenzie Whitman
Research interests: network analysis, resilience of critical infrastructure systems, interdependency modeling, decision analysis, risk management strategies |
 Aparna Oruganti
Research interests: machine learning, predictive analytics, data visualization and optimization for civil, mechanical, and infrastructure applications |
 Brian Xu
Major: Computer Science Research Interests: Machine learning, data analytics, data visualization |
Undergraduate Students
 Vitor Winckler
Undergraduate Researcher, Summer 2016 B.S. graduate from the Mechatronics Engineering at Polytechnic School of University of São Paulo, Brazil. Currently works for a management engineering company, Visagio. Research interests: Big data structure and analysis, data mining, optimization, programming |
 Jean Freitas
Undergraduate Researcher, Summer 2016 Undergraduate student in the Management Engineering Department at Universidade Federal do ABC, Brazil |
 Jenine McKoy
Undergraduate Researcher, Summer 2016 Undergraduate student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan Research interests: statistical modeling, environmental justice, risk analysis, climate impact on communities |
 Brian Rogers
Undergraduate Researcher, Summer 2016 Undergraduate student in the Departments of Earth and Environmental Science and Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania Research interests: data analytics, water usage and resources, thermo-analyzing dark earth soils |
 Sarin Murlidar
Major: Biomedical Engineering Research interests: Data analytics, cyber-physical technologies, freight transportation |
 Min Soo Kim
Major: Mathematics Research interests: bayesian networks, data analytics, inland waterways, transportation economics |
 Alice Zhao
Major: Electrical Engineering, Minor: Engineering Management Research interests: infrastructure resilience, network analysis, data analytics |
 Jacob Park
Major: Computer ScienceResearch Interests: Machine learning, data analytics, data visualization |
| Linglan Zhang
University of Wisconsin-Madison |
Yibin Zhang
University of Maryland |
| Eric Han
Vanderbilt University |
William Harlow
Vanderbilt University |
| Kyra Owensby
Vanderbilt University, UNCF/Koch Scholars Program Fellow
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Joshua McDuffie
North Carolina State A&T, |
| Maria Paula Triana Correa
Universidad de los Andes |
Tristan Kindig,
Vanderbilt University |
| Andres Caro
Universidad de los Andes |
High School Students
 Karim Daouk
Sophomore at Ensworth High School. Research Interests: data visualization, power systems resilience |
 Alexis Sheeler
Alumni of John Overton High School and a participant in the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt. Research interests: statistical learning, power systems resilience |
 Mohamed Hassan
Senior at Antioch High School and Participant of the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt Research Interests: Statistical Modeling, Disaster Recovery, Quantum Field Theory |