DATE: Nov 3, 2021

ABSTRACT: The architectural, engineering, and construction industry is responsible for the design construction, operation, and decommission of buildings and other facilities, transportation infrastructure, telecommunication networks, the power grid, water distribution and wastewater collection systems among many other important and complex systems. Those systems will require more and more that engineers provide a continuous state awareness, assessment and proactive decision making for the complete life cycle of the systems and the processes it creates. Today, during the current 4th industrial revolution, a new group of available digital technologies are allowing us to blur the lines between the physical and digital world creating opportunities for the development of tools that will allow continuous state awareness and proactive decision making to manage buildings and infrastructure systems in both normal and abnor-mal conditions more efficiently and effectively. There are many technological developments and research projects that already support, or begin to support this vision. Civil Engineers, not just electrical and computer engineers and com-puter scientists can and should be involved in delivering this overall vision. At this talk professor Soibelman will intro-duce his vision and work developed within his research group that focus on the application and exploration of emerg-ing Information and Communication Technologies, big data concepts, smart buildings, smart infrastructure systems, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to a broadly defined set of infrastructure systems and associated processes, such as planning, design, construction, facility/infrastructure management, and environmental monitoring, so as to improve their sustainability, efficiency, maintainability, durability, and the overall performance of these systems.

BIO: Professor Soibelman obtained his BS and MS Degrees from the Civil Engineering Department of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He worked as a construction manager for 10 years before moving in 1993 to the US where he obtained in 1998 his PhD in Civil Engineering Systems from the Civil and Environmental Engineering Depart-ment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1998 he started as an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. In 2004 he moved as an Associate Professor to the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and in 2008 was promoted to Professor. From 2012 to 2021, he served as the  Chair of the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California. He is currently the Fred Champion Estate Chair in Engineering and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering.