Preparing the Next Generation of Bridge Engineers
Civil engineering PhD studying AI earns UB award to support research
Seyed Omid Sajedi stands in front of his poster at the spring 2020 Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering poster competition.
By Peter Murphy
Published November 10, 2020
Seyed Omid Sajedi, a civil engineering PhD student studying automated systems for structural inspections and health monitoring will use an award from the Mark Diamond Research Fund (MDRF) to support his research and experiments.
Experiments in artificial intelligence
“I process raw vibration and image data into information about structural damage,” Sajedi says, “artificial intelligence (AI) is the core of my research, making this automation more powerful, reliable and incredibly fast.”
According to Sajedi’s advisor, assistant professor Xiao Liang, Sajedi is more than capable of utilizing this award effectively. “He has great potential to conduct independent research,” Liang says, “he has demonstrated exceptional capability in solving problems creatively with critical thinking.”
The MDRF will help Sajedi advance his research to the next step with a series of experiments. So far, Sajedi has been analyzing numerical simulations. “AI is a powerful tool that is making its way through engineering and structural health monitoring is no exception,” Sajedi says, “So far, we have been able to propose robust solutions based on sophisticated numerical simulations. The next step is to validate these concepts in an experimental level.”
Sajedi will use funds from MDRF to validate his proposed vibration-based damage diagnosis systems. According to Sajedi, “These experiments will be conducted on a small-scale instrumented structure. They will help us gain insight into the reliability of simulation-based deep learning for applications in real structures.”
The funding will support Sajedi’s research in this research area as he tries to answer a number of questions. “AI is a powerful tool that is making its way through engineering and structural health monitoring is no exception. Nevertheless, it is an emerging technology and there are numerous unanswered questions,” Sajedi says.
About the Mark Diamond Fund
The Mark Diamond Fund was started by UB’s Graduate Student Association (GSA) in 1971 to help students gain access to funding, in order to complete their research goals. The Fund is named after Mark Diamond, a former UB graduate student, who served as the research fund’s director form 1981 – 1985. The fund was renamed in his honor shortly after his death in 1986.