People | Smart Resilient Infrastructure and Urban Systems (SiRIUS)

Director

Assistant Professor

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Dr. Milad Roohi is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Charles W. Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL) and the director of the SiRIUS lab. Before joining UNL, He worked as a Senior Scientist at Aon (the world's largest reinsurance intermediary) in the Impact Forecasting Catastrophe Modeling Research and Development Center of Excellence. He completed his Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning. He received his Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Vermont.

He specializes in structural engineering and mechanics, risk, reliability, and resilience engineering, infrastructure sensing and monitoring. His research has been funded by US federal agencies (including NSF, NIST, and HUD) and on Service Corporation, and he has published/presented his research findings in leading journals (e.g., by ASCE, Wiley, Elsevier, and Springer), international conferences, and at the US institutions as an invited speaker.

He is an active voting member of the ASCE Objective Resilience, ASCE Structural Health Monitoring and Control and (SHMC) and ASCE Dynamics technical committees and a member of the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering (IABSE) Task Group on Design Requirements for Infrastructure Resilience.

Ph.D. Students

Saeid Ghasemi

Graduate Research Assistant

Saeid is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Architectural Engineering (Structures) under the supervision of Dr. Roohi and began his studies at UNL in Spring 2023. His current research focuses on the resilience of interdependent networked infrastructure and communities subject to natural hazards such as earthquakes and tornadoes.

Education

M.Sc., Earthquake Engineering, University of Tehran (2017)
- M.Sc. Thesis: "Seismic Vulnerability Assessment of Concrete Gravity Dams Using Fragility Curves"
B.Sc., Civil Engineering, University of Kurdistan (2014)

Awards

Received travel grants to attend the Tornado Hazard Wind Assessment and Reduction Symposium (THWARTS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (August 2023)
Received a registration grant for the 2023 EERI Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California, funded by Computers and Structures, Inc. (CSI). (April 2023)

Pramodit Adhikari

Graduate Research Assistant

Pramodit is a Ph.D. student in Architectural Engineering (Structures) at the Charles W. Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction, under the supervision of Dr. Roohi. He joined the SiRIUS lab in Spring 2024 and has previously worked as a Research Assistant Intern at Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, ID. He earned his master's degree in Architectural Engineering from Colorado State University abd his bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal. His research interests include community resilience, hazard simulation and reliability analysis, sustainability, energy harvesting, and fuel cells.

Education

M.S., Civil Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA (2020)
- M.S. Thesis: "Life-Cycle Cost and Sustainability Analysis of Light-Frame Wood Residential Communities Exposed to Tornados"
B.Sc., Civil Engineering, Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal (2016)

Aleem Ullah

Graduate Research Asst

Aleem is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Architectural Engineering (Structures) under the supervision of Dr. Roohi. He is also a Teaching Assistant for the Engineering Mechanics: Statics class instructed by Dr. Roohi, where he leads recitation classes. His research focuses on infrastructure health monitoring and resilience. Prior to joining UNL, Aleem worked as a Structural Engineer/Design Coordinator in a construction firm in Qatar.

Education

M.Sc., Structural Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea (2016)
- M.Sc. Thesis: "Collapse Analysis of Reinforced Concrete Beam-Column Structures"
B.Sc., Civil Engineering, National University of Science and Technology, Pakistan (2012)

Awards:

Accepted into the C-GCA Pilot Program, a partnership between Kardia Group and NSF’s CMMI division, focused on innovation, panel discussions, and cognitive bias in engineering.
Accepted to the 2024 NHERI Computational Academy with $1,500 NSF travel support. He will participate in Project 3 on ‘Equitable Emergency Response and Recovery during Flooding’ at UT Austin.

Abdallah Al-Zu'bi

Graduate Research Assistant

Abdallah is pursuing his Ph.D. in Architectural Engineering under the supervision of Dr. Fadi AlSaleem and Dr. Roohi. He began his studies at UNL in Spring 2022. His current research focuses on implementing machine learning algorithms using low-power physical devices.

Education

M.Sc., Smart Building Engineering, University of Nebraska Lincoln (2023)
- Thesis: "Trainable Continuous Time Recurrent Network"
M.Sc., Data Science, Princess Sumaya University for Technology (2021)
- Thesis: "A Clustering Approach Based on Pathfinder Optimization"
B.Sc., Computer Engineering, Jordan University of Science and Technology (2012)
- Graduation project "Automated system for Arabic optical character recognition"

Professional Experience

Data Scientist, AI lab for John Wiley & Sons (2019-2022)
Software Engineer at SEDCO, Globital, and Atypon (2012-2019)

Milad Cheraghzade

From 2021 to 2023, Milad conducted research under the supervision of Dr. Roohi, focusing on seismic structural monitoring of instrumented buildings. He published his research in peer-reviewed journals and presented at international conferences such as IWSHM2023, EMI2023, and IMAC2023.

Education

M.Sc., Earthquake Engineering, International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology, Iran
B.Sc., Civil Engineering, University of Ilam, Iran

Undergraduate Researchers

Geoffrey Sanderson

UCARE Student Worker

Geoffrey is an undergraduate student in Architectural Engineering at the Charles W. Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction. Under the supervision of Dr. Roohi, he joined the SiRIUS lab in Spring 2024. His interests include artificial intelligence, machine learning, climate patterns and predictive weather analysis.

Awards:

Recipients of the David C. J. Peters Scholarship created by Southland Industries to honor Peters, an advocate of recruiting quality.
Awarded UCARE (Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experiences) funding for the academic year 2024-2025. The award includes $3,600.00 for the period of August 30, 2024 - May 1, 2025.

Jordan Taylor

Jordan is an undergraduate student in Mechanical Engineering at the Charles W. Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction. Under the supervision of Dr. Roohi, he joined the SiRIUS lab in Spring 2024. His research interests include sustainability, smart buildings, community resilience, and efficiency of systems.

Awards:

Awarded UCARE (Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experiences) funding for the academic year 2024-2025. The award includes $3,600.00 for the period of August 30, 2024 - May 1, 2025.

Jed Fuller

Jed is currently an undergraduate student at the Charles W. Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction. Under the supervision of Dr. Roohi, he joined the SiRIUS Lab in the Spring of 2024. His research interests include sustainability, seismic analysis, energy utilization, community safety, and resilience of structures.

Awards:

Awarded UCARE (Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experiences) funding for the academic year 2024-2025. The award includes $3,600.00 for the period of August 30, 2024 - May 1, 2025.