Four new faculty members are joining the UCF Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering this academic year. They bring with them a wide range of expertise in hazard assessment and mitigation, machine learning, building design, digital twins, smart cities, water quality improvement, greenhouse gas emissions and much more.
More than 30 new faculty members have joined the UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science for the 2023-24 academic year. Learn more about the CECE faculty below:
Zhan joins the department as assistant professor with expertise in landslide hazard assessment and mitigation, soil liquefaction triggering and consequence assessment, earthquake site response and ground motion modeling, geospatial modeling, machine learning, and resilient design of infrastructure. He comes to UCF from The University of Texas at Austin, where he worked as a postdoctoral scholar. He earned his doctoral degree in civil engineering from Clemson University in 2020 and his bachelor’s degree in geological engineering from the Chengdu University of Technology in 2014.
Flores Carreras joins UCF from the University of Michigan, where he served as a doctoral research assistant. He currently serves as a lecturer for the CECE department, with teaching interests in the mechanics of materials and structural engineering. His research interests include advancements in engineering education, improvements to the seismic performance of steel moment resisting frames and the benefit of incorporating non-traditional materials in building design. He earned his doctoral and master’s degrees in civil engineering from the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor and his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from University of Puerto Rico—Mayagüez in 2017.
Hu joins the department in spring 2024 as an assistant professor. Her research focuses on biogeochemistry in managed social and water systems, greenhouse gas emissions and ecological engineering for water quality improvement. Her research has been published in journals such as Nature Climate Change, Ecological Engineering, and Science of the Total Environment, to name a few. She earned her doctoral degree in social and water sciences from the University of Florida, and her master’s and bachelor’s degrees in agricultural, bio-environmental, and energy engineering from China Agricultural University.
Shirzad also joins the department in spring 2024 as an assistant professor. He previously served as a postdoctoral fellow and adjunct professor at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on the development of urban digital twins with the potential of artificial intelligence. Other research interests include smart cities, mobile sensing, urban resilience and sustainability, and computer vision. He earned his doctoral degree in structural engineering from the University of Alberta in 2022, and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees in civil engineering from Sharif University in Iran.
