Ciprian Alecsandru, PhD

Dr. Alecsandru joined the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering as an Assistant Professor in 2006. Prior to earning his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering from Louisiana State University in 2003 and 2006, respectively, he worked as an Assistant Lecturer in the Transportation Faculty at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest for four years, where he also earned his B.Eng. degree.

Research interests

• Traffic Simulation
• Traffic Operations and Control
• Intelligent Transportation Systems
• Soft Computing in Transportation Applications
• Sustainable Transportation Development
• Safety and Operations of Non-Motorized Road Users

Projects

• Cell-Transmission Based Model for Signalized Intersections
  
• Modeling Framework for Large-Scale Traffic Networks
  
• Montreal Public Transit System - Metro
  
• MTQ projects
  

Academic experience

• 2006 - present Transportation Professor in the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, QC
• 2001 - 2006 Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA
• 1997 - 2001 Assistant Lecturer, Transportation Department, Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Romania

Education

• 2006 PhD Civil Engineering Louisiana StateUniversity, Baton Rouge, LA
• 2003 MS Civil Engineering Louisiana StateUniversity, Baton Rouge, LA
• 1998 MS Telematics for Transportation Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Romania
• 1997 BS Automatics for Railroad Transportation Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Romania

• ENGR-233: Applied Advanced Calculus (Winter 2015)

2015

• Hassanzadeh,E., A. Elshorbagy, H. S. Wheater, P. Gober and A. Nazemi (2015), Integratingsupply uncertainties from stochastic modeling into integrated water resourcemanagement: a case study of the Saskatchewan River Basin, ASCE Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, doi: 10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0000581, inpress.

• Ireson,A.M, A. Barr, G. van der Kamp, J. Johnstone, S. Mamet, C. Whitfield, N. Michel,R. North, C. Westbrook, C. Debeer, K. P. Chun, A. Nazemi and J. Sagin (2015),The Changing Water Cycle: the Boreal Plains Ecozone of Western Canada; WIREs Water, 2(5), 505-521, doi:10.1002/wat2.1098.

• Mekonnen,B., A. Nazemi, K. Mazurek, A. Elshorbagy and G. Putz (2015), Hybrid modelingapproach to prairie hydrology: Fusing data-driven and process-basedhydrological models, HydrologicalSciences Journal, 60(9), 1473-1489, doi: 10.1080/02626667.2014.935778.

• Nazemi, A. and H. S. Wheater(2015), On inclusion of water resource management in Earth system models – Part2: Representation of water supply and allocation and opportunities for improvedmodeling, Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 19, 63-90, doi: 10.5194/hess-19-63-2015.

• Nazemi, A. and H. S. Wheater(2015), On inclusion of water resource management in Earth system models – Part1: Problem definition and representation of water demand, Hydrology andEarth System Sciences, 19, 33-61, doi: 10.5194/hess-19-33-2015. 

2014

• AghaKouchak,A., H.-R. Norouzi, K. Madani, A. Mirchi, M. Azarderakhsh, A. Nazemi, N.Nasrollahi, A.-R. Farahmand, A. Mehran and E. Hassanzadeh (2014), Aral Seasyndrome desiccates Lake Urmia: Call for action, Journal of Great LakesResearch, 41(1), 307-311,doi: 10.1016/j.jglr.2014.12.007.

• Nazemi, A.,Md. S. Alam and A. Elshorbagy (2014), Uncertainties in future projections ofextreme rainfall: The role of climate model, emission scenario and randomness, In Proceedings of the 11th InternationalConference on Hydroinformatics,New York, USA, August 17-21, HIC2014-132, available at: http://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_conf_hic/145/

• Nazemi, A.and H. S. Wheater (2014), Assessing the vulnerability of water supply to changing streamflow conditions, Eos Transactions of American Geophysical Union, 95(32), 288, doi:10.1002/2014EOS320007

• Nazemi, A.and H. S. Wheater (2014), How can the uncertainty in the natural inflow regime propagate into the assessment of water resource systems? Advances in Water Resources, 63, 131-142, doi:10.1016/j.advwatres.2013.11.009.

• Hassanzadeh,E., A. Nazemi and A. Elshorbagy (2014), Quantile-based downscaling of precipitation using genetic programming: Application to IDF curves in Saskatoon, ASCE Journal of Hydrological Engineering, 19(5),943–955, doi: 10.1061/(ASCE)HE.1943-5584.0000854.

2013

• Chun, K.P., H. S., Wheater, A. Nazemi and M. N. Khaliq (2013), Precipitationdownscaling in Canadian Prairie Provinces using the LARS-WG and GLM approaches,Canadian Water Resources Journal,38(4), 311-332, doi: 10.1080/07011784.2013.830368.

• Nazemi, A.,H. S. Wheater, K. P. Chun, and A. Elshorbagy (2013), A stochasticreconstruction framework for analysis of water resource system vulnerability toclimate-induced changes in river flow regime, Water Resources Research, 49, doi:10.1029/2012WR012755.

2012 and before

• Nazemi, A.and A. Elshorbagy (2012), Application of copula modeling to the performanceassessment of reconstructed watersheds, StochasticEnvironmental Research and Risk Assessment, 26(2), 189-205, doi:10.1007/s0047-011-0467-7.

• Nazemi, A.,A. Elshorbagy, and S. Pingale (2011), Uncertainties in the estimation of futureannual extreme daily rainfall for the city of Saskatoon under climate changeeffects, 20th Canadian Hydrotechnical Conference, Ottawa, Canada, June 14-17,No. HY-039 (CD Rom).

• Bormann,H., H. M. Holländer, T. Blume, W. Buytaert, G.B. Chirico, J.-F. Exbrayat, D.Gustafsson,H. Hölzel, P. Kraft, T. Krauße, A. Nazemi, C. Stamm, S. Stoll, G.Blöschl and H. Flühler (2011), Comparative discharge prediction from a smallartificial catchment without model calibration: Representation of initialhydrological catchment development, DieBodenkultur, 62(1-4), 23-29.

• Pryke, A.,S., Mostaghim and A. Nazemi (2007), Heatmap visualization of population basedmulti objective algorithms. In LectureNotes in Computer Science: Evolutionary multi-criterion optimization,Volume 4403/2007, pp. 361-375, Springer Berlin Heidelberg, doi:10.1007/978-3-540-70928-2_29.

• Nazemi, A., S. M.Hosseini and M. R. Akbarzadeh-T (2006), Soft computing-based nonlinear fusionalgorithms for describing non-Darcy flow in porous media, Journal of Hydraulic Research, 44(2), 269-282, doi:10.1080/00221686.2006.9521681.

• Nazemi, A.,X. Yao and A. H. Chan (2006), Extracting a set of robust Pareto-optimalparameters for hydrologic models using NSGA-II and SCEM, In Proceedings of IEEE Congress onComputational Intelligence, pp. 1901-1908, IEEE, doi:  10.1109/CEC.2006.1688539.

• Nazemi, A.,M. R. Akbarzadeh-T and S. M. Hosseini (2004), An intuitive view to compareintelligent systems, In Proceedings ofIEEE Annual Meeting of Fuzzy Information, Vol. 2, pp. 566-571, IEEE, doi:10.1109/NAFIPS.2004.1337363.

• Nazemi, A.,M. R. Akbarzadeh-T and S. M. Hosseini (2003), Fuzzy systems as a fusionframework for describing nonlinear flow in porous media. In Proceedings of IEEE Annual Meeting of FuzzyInformation, pp. 389-394, IEEE doi:10.1109/NAFIPS.2003.1226816.

• Nazemi, A., M. R.Akbarzadeh-T and S. M. Hosseini (2002), Fuzzy-stochastic linear programming inwater resources engineering, In Proceedingsof IEEE Annual Meeting of Fuzzy Information, pp. 227-232, IEEE, doi:10.1109/NAFIPS.2002.1018060. 

Invited talks

• Nazemi A, (2015) Human-water sustainability in the face of climate change: Current understanding, gaps in knowledge and ways forward, Council of Canadians (Montreal Chapter), Molson School of Business, 2 December.  

• Nazemi A. (2015), Modeling reservoirs inSaskatchewan River Basin, Modeling Workshop for NSERC’s Changing Cold Region Network (CCRN), National Hydrology Research Center, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada,29 September.

• Nazemi A. (2013), Revisiting the principles of water resource management under uncertain conditions: What to do when predictions are wrong? Environmental Engineering Seminar Series, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, California, United States, 6 December.

• Nazemi A. (2013), Case study: Uncertainty analysis of large-scale models of the South Saskatchewan River in Alberta, Workshop in Uncertainty Estimation for Environmental Modeling, Global Institute for Water Security,University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

• Nazemi A. (2011), Unfolding unknowns using known:the joy of copula modeling in performance assessment of reclaimed mining sites,National Hydrology Research Center (NHRC) Seminar Series, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan,Canada.

• Nazemi A. (2010), (2010), Zen on Chicken Creek or calibration of hydrological models using limited and sparse data, 2^nd Workshop for Chicken Creek Reclaimed Mining Site, Cotbus, Germany. 

Media broadcast

• 2016-01-12: Why do Montreal water mains burst so often?, Montreal Gazette, Montreal (Canada)

• 2015-12-14: Climate change impacts in Iran, VOA Persian TV Program, Voice of America (USA) 

• 2015-12-06: Climate change and sea level rise, Op-ed article for BBC Persian (UK)

• 2015-08-13: Water diversion from foreign sources to the Lake Urmia: Possibilities and threats, One Home One Planet, Radio Farda, Radio Free Europe (Germany).

• 2015-08-11:  Water crisis in Iran? Is water war already started?, VOA Persian TV Program, Voice of America (USA) 

• 2015-06-09: Declining Lake Urmia’s level in latespring of 2015, Late night show, Radio Farda, Radio Free Europe (Germany).

• 2015-06-07: The effects of sanctions on the environmental crisis in Iran, 60 minutes Daily News Program, BBC Persian TV,BBC (UK).

• 2015-05-09: The water crisis in Iran: climate change or water resource management?, 60 minutes Daily News Program, BBC Persian TV,BBC (UK).

• 2015-01-29: Agriculture or Lake Urmia?, One Home One Planet, Radio Farda, Radio Free Europe (Germany).

• 2015-01-22: Which one is more frightening? A drough tor a water management crisis?, One Home One Planet, Radio Farda, Radio Free Europe (Germany).

• 2015-01-08: Aral Sea syndrome desiccates Lake Urmia,One Home One Planet, Radio Farda, Radio Free Europe (Germany).

• 2011-05-17: What does climate change mean to our South Saskatchewan River?, Environment and Community,CFCR Saskatoon Community Radio (Canada).

Journal editorial

• Sustainable Cities and Society; special issue on Water Security Challenges (Managing Guest Editor, 2015-2016).

Meeting organization

• AGU Fall Meeting; oral and poster sessions on WaterResources, Climate Change, and Sustainability: Breakthroughs in ProcessUnderstanding, Data Availability, and Impact Assessment (Primary Convener, session chair, 2015)

Proposal review

• The French National Research Agency; proposal call on Functioning of solid and fluid Earth (Reviewer, 2015) 

• The UK Natural Environment Research Council, proposal call on Sustainable Water (Reviewer, 2015) 

Journal paper review

Nature Scientific Reports, Water ResourcesResearch, Environmental Modeling and Software, Journal of Hydrology, Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, Journal of Hydrological Engineering,Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, Hydrological Processes, WIREs Water, Journal of Hydrometeorology, Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, Journal of Flood Risk Management, Natural Hazards, Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Quaternary International, Ecological Informatics, Canadian Journal of Water Resources, Canadian Journal of Soil Sciences, Journal of Mountain Science, Remote Sensing, Water, River Research and Application, Sustainable Cities and Society, Journal of Soil Science and Environmental Management

Book chapter review

AGU books, Advances in Geosciences, Extremes in a Changing Climate

Presentation judge

• 7th International Conference on the GlobalWater and Energy Cycle Experiment (GEWEX), 14-17 July 2014, Hague, theNetherlands.  

• AGU Fall Meeting, 15 – 19 December 2014, San Francisco, USA.

• AGU Fall Meeting, 14 - 18 December 2015, San Francisco, USA.

Current memberships

• American Geophysical Union

• European Geosciences Union

• International Association for HydrologicResearch

• Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientist of Saskatchewan