Advanced Air Mobility/Urban Air Mobility Research at USF
Friday, September 9, 2022
12 PM ET – 1 PM ET
Urban Air Mobility (UAM) is an emerging concept proposed in recent years that uses electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles (eVTOLs), which is expected to offer an alternative way of transporting passengers and goods in urban areas with significantly improved mobility by making use of low-altitude airspace. In this seminar, Prof. Zhang will present a series of studies on embracing the emerging UAM, from network design and demand estimation, automated flight planning and equitable resource distribution among multiple operators, to procedure design of UAM operations flying in and out of commercial flights.
Dr. Yu Zhang is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida and leads the Smart Urban Mobility Laboratory (SUM-Lab). She serves as the director of the National Institute for Congestion Reduction (NICR), a USDOT National University Transportation Center (UTC), and associate director of the Center for Transportation, Environment, and Community Health (CTECH), a USDOT Tier 1 UTC. Dr. Zhang develops mathematical programming and solution algorithms, simulation tools, econometrics and statistical models, and machine learning/deep learning methods for obtaining innovative solutions for more efficient, resilient, and sustainable multimodal transportation systems. Her recent efforts focus on emerging technologies and services in transportation, including ACES Transportation and Advanced Air Mobility. She has published more than sixty papers in prestigious transportation journals and has been invited to present her work at many highly influential international conferences.
Dr. Zhang serves as the chair of the Transportation Research Board standing committee on the airfield and airspace performance and Associate Editor of Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment. She is also serving on the editorial boards of Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technology, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, and Journal of Air Transport Management. Dr. Zhang is the recipient of the 2020 Amazon Research Award, a prestigious research award supporting innovations at academic institutions and non-profit organizations worldwide, and the 2010 Fred Burggraf Award, which is conferred by the National Academies of Science Transportation Research Board for recognizing the excellence of young researchers.
