PEOPLE

Dr. Chengbo Ai is the director of the AI Lab and an Associate Professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He received his Ph.D. in Transportation Systems Engineering from Georgia Tech and his B.S. in Electronics and Computer Science from Peking University. His interdisciplinary research focuses on developing computational models, ML/AI algorithms, and remote sensing hardware systems for transportation asset management, geometric design, roadway safety, infrastructure preservation and maintenance, and many other critical transportation applications.

Bryan Remache-Patino, Ph.D. Student (CEE): Bryan received his BS in Civil Engineering from the College of New Jersey and joined the AI Lab in the fall of 2022 to pursue his Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering. His research interests include transportation operations, roadway safety, and emerging spatial and sensing data analytics. He received the UMass College of Engineering Fellowship (2022) and the FHWA Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship (2022 and 2023).

Siyuan (Max) Meng, Ph.D. Student (CEE): Max earned his bachelor’s degree in Road, Bridge, and River-crossing Engineering and his master’s degree in Transportation Engineering from Chang’an University, China, and joined the AI Lab in the fall of 2023 to pursue his Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering. Max’s research area will focus on investigating advanced optimization-based resilient management methods for critical transportation infrastructure assets serving vulnerable populations.

Elahe (Ellie) Yahyapour Demouchali, Ph.D. Student (CEE): Ellie has earned her bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Guilan, Iran, and her master’s degree in Biometrics and Intelligent Vision from the Université Paris Est Créteil, France. Ellie joined the AI Lab in the fall of 2023 to pursue his Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering. Her primary research will focus on developing efficient methods to manipulate point clouds in digital twins.

Yanan Zhang, Ph.D. Student (CEE): Yanan earned her bachelor’s degree in BioMedical Engineering from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. Since Spring 2022, she has been pursuing her MS degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UMass. Amy joined the AI Lab in the spring of 2024 to pursue his Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering. Her research focuses on using mobile LiDAR data and ML/AI to make multimodal transportation safer and more reliable.

Runan Cheng, Ph.D. Student (CEE): Runan earned his bachelor’s degree in Automation from Southwest Jiaotong University and his MS degree from the National University of Singapore, and joined the AI Lab in the spring of 2025 to pursue his Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering. Runan’s research will focus on using mobile LiDAR data and machine learning to create a pedestrian infrastructure inventory and assess the associated conditions.