Dr. Fernando Moreu

Prior to his doctorate degree, Fernando Moreu worked in consulting engineering for over ten years, mostly focused in structural design and construction of bridges and structures. His exposure to both industry, design, and construction informs his research interests and publications. He stays active in domestic and international societies related to smart infrastructure design; maintenance and management of infrastructure policies; and structural sensing for safer and cost-effective assessment. He is a registered professional engineer.

Dr. Arthur Kaufman

Arthur Kaufman, MD is Vice Chancellor for Community Health at the University of New Mexico and Distinguished Professor of Family and Community Medicine in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Dr. Lisa L. Losada-Rojas

Dr. Lisa L. Losada-Rojas's research aims to advance communities’ public health through transportation solutions. Other research interests include transportation planning, accessibility, modelling and forecasting, rural transportation, and sustainability. Dr. Losada-Rojas was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto St. George Campus in Canada. Dr. Losada-Rojas has received several awards and recognitions, such as being named a 2021 MIT CEE Rising Star and 2021 LATinE: Latinx Trailblazers in Engineering Fellow.

Dr. Yuting Yang

Dr. Yuting Yang is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of New Mexico. She employs economic tools such as theoretical modeling, empirical analysis, simulation methods, and benefit–cost analysis to evaluate the impact of climate policies on decarbonization and renewable energy investment. Her research centers on promoting an efficient and equitable clean energy transition, with a focus on how climate policies drive electricity sector decarbonization, the equity of energy transition incentives in the residential sector, and the economic feasibility of emerging clean energy technologies. Her recent work has been published in leading economics and interdisciplinary journals, including the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Nature Energy, and Environmental Science & Technology. She also serves as a young editorial member for Applied Energy.

Dr. Susan Bogus Halter 

Dr. Bogus teaches and researches in the area of construction engineering and management. Her research focuses on integrating design and construction to improve sustainability and reduce project delivery time. She has worked extensively in the areas of design-build project delivery, asset management, and sustainable design and construction. Prior to joining UNM, she worked for ten years at CH2M HILL as a project engineer and project manager.

Dr. Su Zhang

Dr. Su Zhang is the Associate Director of the Earth Data Analysis Center at the University of New Mexico. He is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies and the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Zhang is a Geospatial Engineer who specializes in the integration of GIS into decision support systems. He has over 12 years of experience in GIS and remote sensing, infrastructure management, construction engineering and management, and transportation engineering. His current research focuses on leveraging remote sensing, GIS, web mapping, and UAS technologies for transportation infrastructure management. He has been contracted by various federal and state agencies to design, test, and develop spatial-based decision support systems.

Dr. Maryam Hojati

 Dr. Maryam Hojati is an assistant professor in Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at the University of New Mexico (UNM). She received her Ph.D. in 2017 from the Pennsylvania State University. During her academic experience, she worked on a variety of research studies that equipped her with the skills to conduct diverse research in material, structure, and application of additive manufacturing in construction. She was involved in multiple phases of the NASA Centennial Challenge from 2016 to 2019 NASA to build a 3D-printed habitat for deep space exploration. She joined the CCEE department at UNM in Aug. 2019 and established the Advanced Sustainable Construction (ASC) Lab, leveraging her prior experience setting up a 3D-printing lab. Working alongside her team, she focused on designing and developing innovative sustainable materials, adapting them for additive manufacturing (AM) technology. Her research addresses three critical areas in the construction industry, including (1) designing and constructing resilient infrastructures (2) building affordable houses, and (3) designing sustainable construction materials and practices on the earth and beyond.

Dr. Rafi Tarefder

Dr. Rafi Tarefder is a Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental  Engineering and a Regent’s Lecturer at the University of New Mexico. His research work covers pavement materials and system including pavement design, life cycle assessment and decision analyses for optimum maintenance, recycling and renewal; geomechanics specifically moisture movement, thermal and freeze-thaw force assessment; advanced modeling including molecular dynamics, finite element modeling, neural networks, non-parametric regressions, system dynamics, and back calculation, use of nanotechnologies including atomic force microscopy; nanoindentation, infrared and nondestructive technologies.  Dr. Tarefder has (co)authored more than 183 peer-reviewed journal articles and 232 refereed conference papers.  He has also (co)edited 13 books, book chapters, and journal special issues, and organized several conferences and symposia.

Currently, He serves as an Associate Director of two federally funded transportation centers: Southern Plain Transportation Center (SPTC), and Safety and Operations of Large-Area Rural/Urban Intermodal Systems (SOLARIS). He is the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Advances in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Associate Editor of the ASCE Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering and Lead Editor of IACMAG Newsletter. He is the Chair of the annual Paving and Transportation Conference in New Mexico, and a registered Professional Engineer (P.E.) in the state of New Mexico and Idaho. He has received several awards for his scholarship including the prestigious NSF CAREER award, Regent’s Award, John Booker Excellent Medal.

Dr. Carlos Rivera-Gonzalez

Carlos Rivera-Gonzalez is an assistant professor in the Gerald May Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at the University of New Mexico. He holds a Ph.D. degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), a master’s degree in economics from RPI, and a master’s degree in civil engineering with a focus on transportation engineering from Universidad de Los Andes (Bogota, Colombia), the university where he completed his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. He did his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto. Dr. Rivera-Gonzalez was named a 2023 LatinX Trailblazer in Engineering by Purdue University and has received several awards, including the prestigious Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship from the World Resources Institute and the Volvo Research Educational Foundation.

His line of research aims to foster transportation systems and supply chains in which efficiency, livability, and environmental objectives are achieved simultaneously. To accomplish this goal, his research focuses on the interconnections among urban economies, land-use and transportation systems, and supply chain efficiency. His research aims to find ways to foster economic efficiency, sustainability, quality of life, and environmental justice. 

Dr. Renia Ehrenfeucht

Renia Ehrenfeucht is a Professor of the Community + Regional Planning Department and the Associate Dean for Research at the University of New Mexico School of Architecture + Planning. She also currently serves as the Central Region Representative of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) Governing Board.

Dr. Ehrenfeucht is inspired by all transformational social action to create socially just and equitable institutions, environmentally sustainable societies, and vibrant economies that sustain cultural differences as well as traditional and new ways of life. Her research and teaching is motivated by the belief that committed social action can dismantle colonialism and racism and create ways of living that respect diverse people and all species.

Her research explores how people reshape built environments. One focus is public spaces and the politics of everyday life, examining how ordinary spaces and local institutions influence people’s opportunities in diverse environments. She has written about food trucks, street work and Airbnb as moments to explore urban transformation in work, daily life and the right to the street. She also studies shrinking cities and how people, places and institutions respond to population loss. In this area, she has written about disaster recovery in New Orleans as a shrinking city and the reasons that people choose to live in shrinking cities which often have limited amenities and work opportunities.

Her books include Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation in Public Space (with Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris) and Urban Revitalization: Remaking Cities in a Changing World (with Carl Grodach). She also has written numerous journal articles which are listed under Scholarship + Publications.

Dr. Rolf Pendall

Rolf Pendall, Ph.D., AICP, is Professor and chair of the Department of Community & Regional Planning at the University of New Mexico. His mission is to learn and show how planners can contribute to greater spatial justice. Over his 35-plus years as a practitioner, scholar, and teacher, he has researched and taught about the connections between core planning domains—especially land use and housing policy—with harmful outcomes like urban sprawl and spatial injustice. Before joining the faculty at UNM, Pendall was Professor (2018-25) and Department Head (2018-23) of the Department of Urban & Regional Planning at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; he previously directed the Urban Institute’s Center for Metropolitan Housing & Communities (2010-18) and held positions on the planning faculties at Cornell University (1998-2010) and the University of Rhode Island (1995-97). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and master’s degrees in planning and Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Nick Ferenchak

Dr. Ferenchak is focused on developing sustainable and resilient transportation systems primarily through improved health and safety outcomes. His current research focuses on multimodal aspects of emerging transportation technologies and their impact on health and safety. Dr. Ferenchak teaches highway and traffic engineering on the undergraduate and graduate level. He is active in domestic and international societies including the Transportation Research Board and Institute of Transportation Engineers. Dr. Ferenchak is the center director of the Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety, a tier-1 University Transportation Center funded by US DOT.