Syed A. M. Shihab, Ph.D.
Biography
Syed A. M. Shihab is an Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Engineering at Kent State University, where he leads the Green and Advanced Mobility Engineering (GAME) lab. He holds a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Iowa State University and a B.S. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from American International University Bangladesh. He currently teaches Modeling and Forecasting for Aviation Logistics Planning (AERN 65230) and Introduction to Aerospace Engineering (ENGR 15500).
Driven by an interest in operations planning for traditional and advanced air mobility, Dr. Shihab’s research focuses on developing data-driven, optimal decision-making systems for aviation based on artificial intelligence/machine learning, optimization, and operations research techniques. Applications of his work include air traffic management for manned and unmanned aircraft systems (ATM and UTM), pricing and revenue management, scheduling/dispatching, and route/network planning. His research aims to: 1) maximize the performance of air transport systems operating in high dimension, dynamic and uncertain environments, with respect to attributes such as accessibility, efficiency, robustness, resilience, safety, scalability, passenger welfare, societal benefits and profitability; and 2) overcome the technical gaps and barriers needed to safely integrate the anticipated autonomous, high density, diverse operations of advanced air mobility (such as point-to-point passenger and cargo transportation, emergency medical services, search and rescue, and disaster relief using electric/hybrid, manned/human-in-the-loop/unmanned aircraft) in a modern National Airspace System.
During his academic research, he developed a deep reinforcement learning based airline revenue management system called DeepARM. He has also derived a new operational concept for urban air mobility (UAM) services; developed scheduling and dispatching models for scheduled, on-demand, and hybrid UAM services; and extended these models to include the provision of offering frequency regulation services to the power grid with the collection of batteries in the electric vehicle fleet for generating an additional revenue stream. In some of his other notable research projects, he has worked on building decision support tools for Iowa’s Food-Energy-Water network; investigating unsuccessful cases of systems engineering, such as the Joint Strike Fighter F-35 project; and optimizing design of government-owned large-scale complex engineered systems, such as space telescopes. The most recent list of his publications can be found on his ResearchGate profile and Google Scholar profile. Beyond his research pursuits, he enjoys playing various sports, such as cricket, soccer, badminton, volleyball, and golf, and exploring the world. A fun fact about him is that he experienced and survived a bear ambush in Aspen, CO during a cycling adventure with his friends down there.
There are multiple funded openings available in his lab for motivated and hardworking Ph.D., M.S. and undergraduate students (future “GAMErs”) with strong programming and mathematical skills and a keen interest in developing intelligent decision-making and learning systems. Interested students should email him their CV, transcript(s), GRE score, TOEFL/IELTS scores (for international applicants only), and publications if any. The email should also state their research interests, the motivation fueling their research interests, and why they are interested to join his research group.