(October 30) Building an Integrated Advanced Air Mobility Ecosystem: Research and Innovation at USF

Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) is rapidly evolving from a technology concept toward an emerging transportation mode with the potential to transform how people and goods move within and between metropolitan regions. Realizing this potential, however, requires more than new aircraft. AAM must be developed as an integrated ecosystem that connects aircraft, vertiports, airspace, operators, passengers and freight, and existing ground transportation systems.
This presentation provides an overview of research and innovation at the University of South Florida (USF) aimed at enabling the safe, efficient, resilient, and sustainable development of this emerging ecosystem. The talk will highlight USF research spanning AAM demand modeling and market analysis, vertiport and network planning, airspace and flight operations, system optimization, and multimodal air–ground integration. It will also introduce AAMSim, a simulation platform developed at USF to model passenger and aircraft operations, evaluate alternative operational strategies, and support system-level planning and decision-making.

Yu (April) Zhang, PhD
Program Director, Advanced Air Mobility
Center for Urban Transportation Research

“Dr. Yu (April) Zhang is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida, where she leads the Smart Urban Mobility Laboratory (SUM-Lab) and directs the Advanced Air Mobility Research Program at the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR). Her research focuses on the development of mathematical programming models, solution algorithms, simulation tools, and machine learning methods to advance efficient, resilient, and sustainable multimodal transportation systems. More recently, her work has centered on the safe, efficient, scalable, and resilient integration of Advanced Air Mobility into both multimodal transportation systems and the national airspace system.

Dr. Zhang is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). She received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and her B.S. degree in Transportation Engineering from Southeast University in China.”