Awad Abdelhalim is the Assistant Director of Research at the MIT Transit Lab and JTL Urban Mobility Lab. He earned a B.Sc. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Khartoum, Sudan, before joining Virginia Tech where he received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Transportation Infrastructure and Systems Engineering, alongside a National Science Foundation (NSF) graduate certificate in Urban Computing. Dr. Abdelhalim's research interests and expertise span multiple aspects of urban computing and intelligent transportation systems, including traffic simulation and driver behavior modeling, transit planning and performance assessment, transportation analytics, and applied artificial intelligence. His doctoral dissertation focused on developing computationally efficient algorithms and frameworks at the nexus of computer vision, traffic flow theory, and micro-simulation modeling that enable real-time trajectory-based traffic safety and performance assessments at urban intersections. He has taught multiple courses at Virginia Tech's College of Engineering, was a member of the university's self-driving car team working on machine perception systems, and has industry experience working in the transportation consulting private sector and with the Washington D.C. Department of Transportation (DDOT).