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CTR Fellows

The Center for Transportation Research has established itself as a go-to source for information, research, and expertise in all areas of transportation. In 2014, CTR established its Fellows program to recognize some of the people who have helped advance that work. The program’s purpose is to recognize and improve collaboration among faculty across the university who are focused on transportation-related research.

“Our goal is for faculty fellows to play an active role in our center, helping provide new ideas and initiatives,” said David Clarke, director of the program and a research associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. “At the same time, we realize that working together across departments is often the key to success, so we foster that as well. 

“Members of the 2021 class bring innovative perspectives to transportation research through their expertise in transportation equity, GIS modeling and visualization, intelligent transportation technologies, supply chain management, neural engineering, brain-computer interface, computational physiology, and Alzheimer’s care. In this class, we introduce our second Student Fellow, Pankaj Dahal.” 
– Dr. David B. Clarke, CTR Director

2021 Fellows

(from left to right) Courtney Cronley, Pankaj Dahal, Asad Khattak, Alex Rodrigues, Xiaopeng Zhao

Dr. Courtney Cronley is an Associate Professor in UTK’s College of Social Work. Her research spans transportation equity, feminist geography, and access to opportunities for individuals experiencing homelessness, poverty, and housing disruption. She teaches graduate-level courses in applied statistics and research methods. She is a faculty liaison for the National Center for Excellence in Homeless Services and leads the UT AccessKnox Community of Scholars. She presents nationally and internationally on transportation equity and community-based planning, and currently co-leads a study of latent transportation demand among families facing economic and housing insecurity.

Mr. Pankaj Dahal is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Civil & Environment Engineering, and he is also pursuing his Master’s in Statistics from Haslam College of Business. He graduated with a Bachelors in Civil Engineering from Tribhuvan University, Nepal. His research interests include GIS for transportation planning, GIS modeling and visualization, data mining and statistical analysis, machine learning, and deep learning. Most recently, he has been assisting Dr. David Clarke to study railroad traffic flows within the U.S. Among his contributions, he updated the UT rail network, prepared data sets using the Carload WayBill sample, and ran the RAILNET model to produce results.

Dr. Asad Khattak is Beaman Distinguished Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UTK. He serves as the Associate Director for the Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety—a competitively awarded US Department of Transportation National University Transportation Center. His research focuses on intelligent transportation technologies, transportation safety, and sustainable transportation. Dr. Khattak received his MS and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering from Northwestern University. He is Editor of Science Citation Indexed Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems and Associate Editor of International Journal of Sustainable Transportation.

Dr. Alex Rodrigues is a Senior Lecturer of Supply Chain Management in the Haslam College of Business at UTK. Dr. Rodrigues has published in supply chain management and logistics journals. He is co-author of the book Business Logistics: The Brazilian Perspective. He has also acted as the chief editor of the journal Latin American Business Review between 2012 and 2014. His teaching and research interests involve: Global logistics strategy and operations; Global/national logistics expenditures and performance indexes; Humanitarian/disaster relief logistics; Supply chain disruptions; Inventory strategy and deployment; and Empirical/theoretical modeling of supply chains.

Dr. Xiaopeng Zhao is a professor of mechanical, aerospace, and biomedical engineering at UTK. Dr. Zhao’s teaching and research interests include neural engineering, brain-computer interface, social robotics, Alzheimer’s care, machine learning, artificial intelligence, computational physiology, and dynamics and control. He is the director of the One UT Collaboration and Innovation Grant on Detection, Care and Treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease. He has served as the faculty lead for the Brain Computer Interface Community of Scholars at the University of Tennessee since 2018.

2019-20 Fellows

(from left to right): Melissa Bowers, Associate Professor and Beaman Professor of Business in the Haslam College of Business; David Icove, Underwriters Laboratories Professor of Practice in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Tim Rials, Associate Dean of AgResearch at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture; James Ostrowski, Associate Professor in Industrial and Systems Engineering and Director of Graduate Studies; Hunter Sinclair, MS candidate in the Department of Geography.

2018-19 Fellows

(from left to right): Candace Brakewood, Assistant Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering; Linda Daugherty, Assistant Director, Center for Applied Research and Evaluation; Hyun Kim, Associate Professor, Department of Geography; Xueping Li, Associate Professor, Industrial & Systems Engineering; Edward Taylor, Director, Construction Industry Research & Policy Center.

2017-18 Fellows

(from left to right): Qing Cao, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Rachel Chen, Director, Center for Sustainable Business and Development; Brad Collett, Associate Professor of Plant Sciences with a faculty appointment to the School of Landscape Architecture; Butch Irick, Research Assistant Professor and Research Director of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering; Lance Saunders, Assistant Professor of Marketing & Supply Chain Management. 

2016-17 Fellows

(from left to right): Richard Bennett, Director of the Engineering Fundamentals program and professor of civil and environmental engineering; Eugene Fitzhugh, associate professor of kinesiology, recreation and sport studies; Anahita Khojandi, assistant professor in industrial and systems engineering; Jonathan Overly, founder and director of the East Tennessee Clean Fuels Coalition and a member of the Department of Energy’s Clean Cities Hall of Fame; Georg Schaur, associate professor and Spiva Scholar in economics.

2015-16 Fellows

(from left to right): Mingzhou Jin, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering; John Bell, Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management; John Ma, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Charles Sims, Department of Economics, Howard Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy; Subhadeep Chakraborty, Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering.

2014-15 Fellows

(from left to right): Rapinder Sawhney, Heath Fellow in Business and Engineering, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering; Christopher Cherry, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Jennifer Richards, Department of Food Science and Technology; Mary C. Holcomb, Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management; and Shih-Lung Shaw, Alvin and Sally Beaman Professor of Geography.