Hesham Ahmed Rakha, the Samuel Reynolds Pritchard Professor of Engineering, from Blacksburg, Virginia, has been named an
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow. He is being recognized for contributions to optimization, modeling and assessment of transportation systems.
The IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred by the IEEE Board of Directors upon a person with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. The total number selected in any one year cannot exceed one-tenth of one- percent of the total voting membership. IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement.
Dr. Rakha is being recognized for his technical contribution to the area of multi-modal large-scale transportation system modeling. To this end, he has conducted fundamental research and published over 450 peer-reviewed papers in the area of transportation system modeling culminating in the continuous development and enhancement of the INTEGRATION microscopic traffic simulation software[1] (https://sites.google.com/a/vt.edu/hrakha/software), an internationally recognized transportation modeling tool. Dr. Rakha’s second distinctive technical contribution is in the area of transportation energy modeling and optimization. Specifically, he has developed various vehicle energy and fuel consumption models that are used world-wide to assess the energy and environmental impacts of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) applications and emerging Connected Automated Vehicle (CAV) systems. The models include the VT-Micro, VT-Meso, the Virginia Tech Comprehensive Fuel consumption Model (VT-CPFM), the VT-CPEM, and the VT-CPHEM models.
Dr. Rakha received the B.Sc. degree (honors) from Cairo University, Egypt in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 1987, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 1990 and 1993, respectively.
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[1] The INTEGRATION software was conceptualized and first developed by Dr. Rakha’s advisor, the late Michel Van Aerde.