Dr. Huthaifa Ashqar Profile

Faculty Member

Academic Rank: 

Assistant Professor

Specialization: 

Mobility, Smart Cities, Urban Policy, Transportation Safety and Policy, Economic Development, Connected and Automated Vehicles, Traffic Theory and Engineering, ITS, AI and Machine Learning

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Education: 

University/College Name	Degree Received	Specialization
Virginia Tech	Phd	Civil Engineering - Smart Transportation/Smart Cities
Virginia Tech		Two Graduate Certificates in Data Science and Economic Development.
University of Minho	MSc/MS	Urban Engineering - Road Infrastructure
An-Najah National University	BSc/BS	Civil Engineering - Transportation

Academic Experience: 

From	To	Present	Position	Institution	Description
10/09/2023			Assistant Professor	Arab American University
01/08/2019	30/06/2022		Adjunct Professor	University of Maryland Baltimore County	My role includes teaching graduate courses toward master degree in Data Science, developing and managing the class syllabus and ensuring that the syllabus meets department and college standards, planning and creating lectures, in-class discussions, and assignments, reporting student learning outcomes, class reviews, and analyzing student data, collaborating with colleagues on course curriculum, advising students on how to be successful and achieve goals, staying updated on innovations and changes within their course field, and participating in professional development activities.
01/01/2022	30/06/2022		Adjunct Professor	An-Najah National University	Adjunct Professor for Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. This course will introduce the fundamental concepts and techniques used to design and build intelligent computer systems. A particular focus will be on the statistical and decision-theoretic modeling paradigm. Students will be able to build autonomous agents that can efficiently make decisions in fully informed, partially observable, and adversarial environments. The constructed software agents are capable of performing intelligently by either accomplishing computation, e.g., searching, or by drawing inferences by learning from data. Students will understand what supervised machine learning algorithms are and how they can be employed in classifying handwritten digits and photographs. The techniques you learn in this course apply to a wide variety of artificial intelligence problems and will serve as the foundation for further study in any application area you choose to pursue.
01/06/2019	01/06/2020		Adjunct Faculty	Columbia University	Adjunct Faculty Associate for Capstone Project: Solving Real World Problems with Analytics. The course serves as the capstone project for the Master of Science in Applied Analytics degree. As an industry-driven project, the capstone requires synthesis of program content applied to real-world challenges to apply the leadership, strategic management, communication and modern analytics core coursework to industry-sponsored analytics projects. Working in teams and with faculty, students critically assess a company’s real-world data challenges and opportunities, formulate a problem definition, derive insights, and develop an integrated data-savvy analytics plan and solution. The project helps students develop and apply the technical, leadership, and communication skills required to identify and implement solutions/approaches.
01/01/2016	01/01/2018		Research Fellow	National Science Foundation
01/08/2015	01/06/2018		Doctoral Researcher	Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI)
01/09/2013	28/02/2015		Researcher	Center for Territory, Environment and Construction (CTAC) - University of Minho

Administrative Experience: 

From	To	Present	Position	Institution	Description
01/02/2021			Consultant/Business Lead and Developer/Data Scientist	Precision Systems, Inc.
01/08/2018	01/02/2021		Lead Technical Specialist/Project Manager	Booz Allen Hamilton
01/09/2018	01/02/2021		Technical Advisor	US Department of Energy - The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)
01/06/2018	01/08/2018		Senior Transportation Engineer	Intelligent Automation, Inc.

Courses Taught: 

Course Title	Level
Machine Learning	Graduate
Natural Language Processing (NLP)	Graduate
Introduction to Data Science	Graduate
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence	Undergraduate
Statics	Undergraduate
Engineering Geology	Undergraduate
IT Project Management	Undergraduate

Biography: 

Dr. Ashqar has 10+ years of experience with a primary focus on Connected and Automated Vehicles, Innovative Mobility, Intelligent Transportation Systems, Advanced Transportation and Energy Technologies, AI, and Data Analytics. He has honed his ability to quickly familiarize himself with the technical content and challenges in new fields to find robust solutions to problems. By combining his rigorous engineering research and training and interdisciplinary teamwork experience, he has identified promising opportunities for technological and public policy advancements. Dr. Ashqar has experience throughout his professional and academic years. His experience includes being a Technical Advisor for programs with over $50 million value in advanced transportation and energy technologies at U.S. DOE’s ARPA-E.

Skills: 

Data Science and Analysis

Programming Languages: Python, R, MATLAB, SAS, SPSS, C++

Transportation Simulation: INTEGRATION, QueensOD, VISSIM, VISTRO, VISUM, CORSIM, HCS, Synchro/SimTraffic, PASSER, SIDRA, TransModeler/CAD, MATSim

Design and Analysis: ArcGIS, Arena, MicroStation, AutoCAD Civil 3D, 3D Max Design

Awards: 

1st place in the IEEE UAS4T competition, Virginia Tech, USA, 2020.

National Science Foundation Fellowship, Virginia Tech, USA, 2016 – 2018.

Erasmus Mundus Scholarship, University of Minho, Portugal, 2013 – 2015.

An-Najah National University’s Honor List, An-Najah National University, Palestine, 2013.

Civil Engineering Department’s Award, An-Najah National University, Palestine, 2013.

C.V.: 

Hiashqar_Resume_1023_AAUP.pdf

Languages: 

Arabic

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English

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