Ahmad F. Taha

Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Civil and Environmental Engineering
Electrical and Computer Engineering

Intellectual Neighborhoods

Research Focus

Taha’s career objective is to lead discoveries toward fundamental advances in engineering by addressing research challenges, fostering innovation, and educating the next generation of engineers. His research objective is to be at the frontier level of dynamic, urban infrastructure and cyber-physical systems (CPS) sciences, with applications in energy, water, and more recently transportation systems. Taha’s current research and teaching interests are:

• Dynamic networks and cyber-physical systems sciences
• Sustainable power systems control, operation, and planning
• Water distribution networks control and optimization
• Transportation systems state estimation and feedback control problems
• Cyber-security of power grids, water networks, and global positioning system (GPS)

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Biography

Dr. Ahmad F. Taha is an Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee). He holds a Ph.D. and a Bachelor’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University (West Lafayette, Indiana; 2015) and the American University of Beirut (Beirut, Lebanon; 2011). Taha has a courtesy appointment in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Vanderbilt. Prior to joining Vandy in August 2021, Taha was an Assistant Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Taha was also a visiting researcher at Argonne National Laboratory, University of Toronto, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His research and teaching interests span dynamic systems sciences, control theory, optimization, and cyber-security with applications in energy, water, and transportation systems. His recent research examines how complex and dynamic urban infrastructure operate, behave, and sometimes misbehave. Taha examines the role of technological advances in dynamic systems and data sciences in shaping future infrastructure networks. His research publications analyze the impact of (i) modern sensing and actuation technologies and (ii) model-driven, physics-informed decision making and real-time control in improving the welfare of infrastructure networks.

Taha’s research offers usable solutions to complex engineering problems—from regulating concentrations of contaminants in drinking water systems, traffic monitoring on highways, designing algorithms for fuel-free energy systems, to securing infrastructure against cyber-attacks. His publications appear in Water Resources Research, Applied Energy, Automatica, Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, IEEE Transactions on: Smart Grid, Power Systems, Automatic Control, and Intelligent Transportation Systems. Taha incorporates his research interests in the courses he offers (Introduction to Engineering, Feedback Control Systems, Linear Systems Control Theory, and Optimization and Control of Cyber-Physical Systems).

Taha is also an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid (since November 2018) and IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems (starting January 2022). Taha is also the Electronic Information Chair of the Control Systems Society (CSS), was the sole editor of the CSS Electronic Letter (E-Letter) from 2017—2020, and the co-founder of the CSS State-Space Forum. Taha is also the sustainability chair of the 60th Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) in Austin, Texas.