Mohamad Alipour, a graduate student working in the Mobile Laboratory for Rapid Evaluation of Transportation Infrastructure at the UVA School of Engineering and Applied Science, has received a 2018 O.H. Ammann Research Fellowship in Structural Engineering. The Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers gives the award to encourage creation of new knowledge in structural design and construction. Alipour is in his fifth year working toward his Ph.D. in civil engineering in the Department of Engineering Systems and Environment, which is also the University of Virginia's home to systems and environmental engineering.
One of the qualifications successful applicants for the fellowship must demonstrate is the ability to conceive and explore original ideas in the field of structural engineering.
This is evidenced by Mohamad's work in the area of using applied deep learning and machine learning to develop data-driven strategies for infrastructure condition assessment and structural health monitoring,” said his supervisor, Associate Professor Devin Harris.
Alipour received $8,000 for his research, which broadly focuses on making urban infrastructure and the built environment smart and resilient using machine intelligence.
Alipour already has nine publications in peer-reviewed journals, as well as 13 top-tier national and international conference proceedings. He was the 2017 winner of UVA's annual Three-Minute Thesis Competition, and a 2018 recipient of UVA's Double Hoo Award for the project titled “SensCam: Developing Next-Generation Camera-Based Sensors for Health Monitoring of Critical Infrastructure.”