Elif Sertel

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Elif Sertel

Visiting Researcher

Professor, Istanbul Technical University

Elif Sertel is a Professor of Geomatics Engineering at Istanbul Technical University and former Director of the ITU Center for Satellite Communications and Remote Sensing. A Fulbright Scholar at Rutgers University and the first Geomatics Engineer from Turkey to receive this distinction, she completed her Ph.D. on land cover change and regional climate impacts and continued at Rutgers as an NSF-funded post-doctoral researcher. Her research and teaching interests span geospatial databases, remote sensing, and geographic information systems (GIS), with an emphasis on developing decision support systems and understanding interactions among human activities, land surface, and climate. In recent years, she has worked extensively on deep learning and geospatial data analytics to address environmental problems such as soil salinity, wildfires, droughts, and floods. She applies big geospatial data and GeoAI methods in multidisciplinary collaborations with academic and industry partners, with research strongly aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 11, 13, and 15. She serves as Associate Editor of GIScience and Remote Sensing and the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation journals. Prof. Sertel received the Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA-GEBİP) in 2017 and the TÜBİTAK Incentive Award in Engineering from the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey in 2021, becoming the first scientist in Geomatics Engineering in Turkey to earn both honors.

Jeff Bayless

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Jeff Bayless

Visiting Associate Researcher

AECOM

Dr. Jeff Bayless is an engineering seismologist at AECOM, where he specializes in earthquake ground motions and seismic hazard analyses for engineering applications. He holds a PhD from the University of California, Davis and is a visiting scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has global experience with ground motion seismic hazard analyses, with emphasis on the ground motion characterization, including earthquake ground motion simulations and development of ground motion prediction equations. His research focuses are on empirical ground motion modeling, including those for earthquake ground motion Fourier spectra, rupture directivity effects, and site and basin response.

Ray Huffaker

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Ray Huffaker

Visiting Researcher

University of Florida

Ray Huffaker is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Florida, where he previously worked in the ecosystems complexity group (https://abe.ufl.edu/people/faculty/ray-huffaker/). His research applies empirical nonlinear dynamics to reconstruct the nonlinear spatial and temporal dynamics of real-world and experimental environmental and food systems from observational data. This allows him to map out and measure causal interactions in real-world networks, as well as construct data-driven biophysical models of real-world system dynamics using recurrent neural network AI modeling, particularly echo state neural networks. Huffaker's research has investigated a variety of complex environmental systems, including hydrological resilience to climatic extremes, soil moisture dynamics, spatial dynamics of hillside soil erosion, water treatment in manmade wetlands and bioreactors, dynamics of red-algae blooms, renewable energy production, and salt-water intrusion. He has taught doctoral courses in nonlinear data diagnostics and biosystems modeling, conducted workshops on empirical nonlinear dynamics worldwide, and co-authored a book on the topic.

Caio Souto Maior

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Caio Souto Maior

Visiting Assistant Professor

Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE-Brazil)

Caio Souto Maior is an Assistant Professor at the Technology Center of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE-Brazil), and a researcher at the Center for Risk Analysis, Reliability Engineering and Environmental Modeling (CEERMA-UFPE). He holds a graduate degree (2015), master's degree (2017), and doctorate (2020) in Industrial Engineering (Area of concentration: Reliability Engineering) from UFPE. He was a Postdoctoral Researcher at UFPE (2020-2021) and holds a graduate sandwich degree from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain (2012-2013). He is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal PLOS One and a regular reviewer for journals such as Reliability Engineering and Systems Safety, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Safety Science, and IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. He is currently a permanent member of the Graduate Program in Production Engineering at UFPE, an advisor in the Human Resources program of Brazil's National Agency for Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Biofuels, a member of the Brazilian Society of Operational Research, and a member of the Brazilian Association for Risk Analysis, Process Safety and Reliability. He is involved in research projects with several Brazilian companies in the oil and gas sector. His scientific interest focuses on Reliability Engineering, Machine Learning (quantum, deep, machine), Computer Vision, Signal Analysis, Risk Analysis, and application in the energy sector. Recently, he has been developing projects aimed at decision support in the health sciences. He will work directly with Professor Droguett as a visiting scholar at UCLA for one year. 

Eduardo Rodríguez

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Eduardo Rodríguez

Visiting Graduate Researcher
University of Chile

Eduardo Rodríguez Cárcamo is a PhD candidate at the University of Chile. He holds a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tarapacá in Arica, Chile. In addition, he holds a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Chile. His main research areas are solar radiation, exergy and machine learning. He has experience in sustainability projects and as a research assistant in projects of characterization and prediction of solar energy. In addition, he was an adjunct professor and an external researcher at the University of Tarapacá. He was also a member of the Laboratory for Environmental Research in Arid Zones (LIMZA) at the University of Tarapacá. He has been awarded an undergraduate exchange program in Germany by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany and a national PhD scholarship by the National Research and Development Agency (ANID) from the Chilean government.  Currently, he is a Visiting Graduate Researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Lavinia Mendes Araujo

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Lavinia Mendes Araujo

Visiting Graduate Researcher
Federal University of Pernambuco

Lavinia Mendes Araujo is a Ph.D. Candidate in Industrial Engineering at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE), Brazil, where she also completed her M.Sc. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from the Universidade Federal da Paraíba, with a year in France at the École de Génie Industriel – Grenoble INP as part of an exchange program. She is a member of the Center for Risk Analysis, Reliability Engineering, and Environmental Modeling (CEERMA/UFPE) and is part of the human resources program of Brazil's National Agency for Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Biofuels. Currently, she is involved in a research project in collaboration with the R&D center of a company in the Brazilian oil and gas sector. Her Ph.D. research focuses on modeling and solving reliability engineering problems in the energy industry through quantum methods, emphasizing combinatorial optimization and machine learning. During the six months as a visiting graduate researcher at UCLA, she will work under the supervision of Professor Droguett, concentrating on quantum computing methods.

Djayr Alves Bispo Junior

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Djayr Alves Bispo Junior

Visiting Graduate Researcher
Federal University of Pernambuco

Djayr Alves Bispo Junior is a Ph.D. Candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), Brazil. He holds a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG) and a master's degree from the Federal University of Paraíba (UFPB). He is also specialized in Occupational Safety Engineering. Currently, he is a Visiting Graduate Researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. During his master's degree, Djayr Bispo focused on research related to the energy utilization of biogas from landfills. His Ph.D. research focuses on deep learning models to predict wind power generation and wind speed, with the aim of maximizing the productive efficiency of wind farms. He is also involved in a research project funded by a Brazilian energy company, in partnership with UFPE, focused on developing a computational tool for Energy Performance Assessment to optimize Predictive Maintenance strategies.

Maryam Tabibzadeh

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Maryam Tabibzadeh,
Visiting Associate Professor

California State University, Northridge (CSUN)

Dr. Maryam Tabibzadeh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Manufacturing Systems Engineering and Management at the California State University, Northridge (CSUN). Her research has been focused on risk analysis in complex safety-critical and technology-intensive industries, such as healthcare and offshore drilling sectors. Investigating the critical role of human and organizational factors, along with technological elements, in those industries has been a major focus of her research projects. Her main areas of research are risk assessment and safety management, accident investigation and prevention, patient safety, and offshore energy safety. Dr. Tabibzadeh has presented and published papers in different peer-reviewed conferences and journals. As part of her accomplishments, she received the Distinguished Engineering Educator Award in 2022 and the Outstanding Engineering Achievement Merit Award in 2018 from The Engineers’ Council. She was recently selected as an Early-Career Research Fellow (2024 – 2025) at the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She was also the College of Engineering and Computer Science’s Research Fellow at CSUN in 2021 – 2022 and the Easton Foundation Faculty Fellow in 2019 – 2020. Dr. Tabibzadeh received her Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California.

Ania Khodabakhshian

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Ania Khodabakhshian
Visiting Graduate Researcher

Department of Architecture, Built Environment, and Construction Engineering of Politecnico di Milano

Ania Khodabakhshian is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Architecture, Built Environment, and Construction Engineering of Politecnico di Milano. Her research interests include Machine Learning, Construction Management, Risk Management, Building Energy Retrofit, Ethics-aware technology implementation, and Academia-Industry partnerships. During her six-month visit at UCLA, she will research Machine Learning-based Risk Management models in Construction Projects under the supervision of Professor Droguett, which is a part of her ongoing industrial research in collaboration with Jacobs Solutions Inc. She has previously collaborated with MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, the University of Salford, and the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB) in the scope of grant-won projects.

Tadahiro Kishida

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Tadahiro Kishida
Assistant Professor

Khalifa University

Dr. Tadahiro Kishida is an Assistant Professor at Khalifa University, UAE and a visiting scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a PhD from the University of California, Davis. He was an Assistant Project Scientist at the University of California, Berkeley; Assistant Professor at Chiba University, Japan; Engineer at URS Corporation in Oakland, California. He holds a professional engineering license in the State of California. He was awarded with Faculty Research Excellence in 2018 and 2019 at Khalifa University. His research interests include strong ground motions and data processing, dynamic soil behaviors, site characterization, dams/levees dynamic responses, and soil liquefaction.