The University of Central Florida Graduate Council has recommended Kamol Roy, to receive the 2018-2019 university award for the Outstanding Master’s Thesis in the Engineering, Physical Sciences and Life Sciences category. This award recognizes the quality, content and exceptional contribution in the field of Civil Engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

The Graduate Council was impressed by the high quality of all of the winners at the college level, and the committee found it difficult to select a winner.  However, they agreed that Kamol Roy thesis exemplifies the dedication, commitment, and excellence that this award was established to honor.

The thesis title is “Understanding Crisis Communication and Mobility Resilience During Disasters from Social Media”. The thesis focuses on crisis communication dynamics and factors for efficient crisis communication during a disaster. It also proposes methods to quantify human mobility disruptions and resilience during disasters from location-based social media data. Kamol gathered a great experience in conducting the thesis. They publish and present in 2 papers in the Transportation Research Board conference and 2 papers are under review in the journals. The work using the method developed in the thesis has received honorable mention in data for climate action challenge(D4CA).