Emergency Evacuations Task Force
May 18, 2013
Dr. Li Zhang, associate professor in Civil Engineering, has been appointed to a national task force for emergency preparedness.
Dr. Zhang will serve a nearly three-year term on the task force for emergency evacuations of the Transportation Research Board, a division of the National Research Council.
The 26-member task force focuses on preparing for emergency evacuations from natural or man-made hazards. The group will work to identify research needs and provide resources for organizations seeking to plan for evacuations.
Zhang joined the Mississippi State University faculty in 2005 and founded the Mississippi Transportation Laboratory. Recently, he established a fellowship to support students’ transportation research and activities. He also serves as president of New Global Systems for Intelligent Transportation Management Corp., which focuses on the development of traffic simulations for the US Department of Transportation. Prior to coming to Mississippi, he held faculty positions at Southwest Jiaotong University, China.
Zhang holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in railroad engineering from the Shanghai Institute of Railroad Technology, China. He also holds master’s and doctoral degrees from Virginia Polytechnic University in computer science and application, and civil engineering respectively.
The Transportation Research Board is one of six divisions of the National Research Council and is administered by the national academies of science and engineering, as well as the Institute of Medicine. Since it was established in 1920, it has worked to bring together engineers, scientists and other researchers from the public, private and academic sectors in the name of transportation science.