Hamid Parsaei

Design of a New Mobile-Optimized Remote Laboratory Application Architecture for M-Learning

As mobile learning (M-Learning) has demonstrated increasing impacts on online education, more and more mobile applications are designed and developed for the M-Learning. In this paper, a new mobile-optimized application architecture using Ionic framework is proposed to integrate the remote laboratory into mobile environment for the M-Learning. With this mobile-optimized application architecture, remote experiment applications can use a common codebase to deploy native-like applications on many different mobile platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed new architecture for M-Learning, an innovative remote networked proportional–integral–derivative control experiment has been successfully implemented based on this new application architecture. The performance is validated by the Baidu mobile cloud testing bed.

A Novel Wiki-Based Remote Laboratory Platform for Engineering Education

With the unprecedented growth of e-learning, more and more new IT technologies are used to develop e-learning tools. As one of the most common forms of social computing, Wiki technology has been used to develop the collaborative and cooperative learning platform to support multiple users learning online effectively. In this paper, we propose a new software architecture to create a novel wiki-based remote laboratory platform by combining the advantages of both Wiki technology and remote laboratory technology. This platform is implemented based on a unified framework for remote laboratory development and an open source wiki software package, MediaWiki. To illustrate the effectiveness of this platform, two remote experiments, Smart Vibration Platform (SVP) and Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) motor speed control, are integrated into this platform. This new wiki-based remote laboratory has been used for teaching Mechanical Engineering courses and creating students’ assignments at the University of Houston.

Models and computational algorithms for maritime risk analysis: a review

Due to the undesirable implications of maritime mishaps such as ship collisions and the consequent damages to maritime property; the safety and security of waterways, ports and other maritime assets are of the utmost importance to authorities and researches. Terrorist attacks, piracy, accidents and environmental damages are some of the concerns. This paper provides a detailed literature review of over 180 papers about different threats, their consequences pertinent to the maritime industry, and a discussion on various risk assessment models and computational algorithms. The methods are then categorized into three main groups: statistical, simulation and optimization models. Corresponding statistics of papers based on year of publication, region of case studies and methodology are also presented.

Incorporating Human Factors in Course Design: Utility of Wearable Technologies

The purpose of this paper is to describe efforts taken by Texas A&M University at Qatar to bridge the gap between traditional modes of instruction and a new tech-savvy student populace. The undertaking proved to be challenging as it required addressing the buildup of a technology infrastructure, development of training programs, and establishment of motivational strategies to encourage experimentation with innovative teaching ideas. One promising idea that resulted from the aforementioned efforts showed that the approach of incorporating elements of technologies that are pervasive among students in course design has the potential to promote acceptance and enable effectiveness. A pilot study that is discussed in this paper utilized a wearable technology with an optical head mounted display to develop multimedia instructions for chemical engineering students. Student surveys revealed mixed reactions to different parts of the study but the overall enthusiasm about the approach remained positive.

Develop a scheduler and federated authentication for remote laboratory access

This paper addresses the needs of authentication and authorization when the target engineering experiment objects are exported from the experiments provide server to an end user experiment scheduler web server (SWS). We discuss our solution based on using a novel unified framework for engineering experiment objects and integrating the MD5 encryption and decryption algorithm based security management engine for a federated authentication and authorization uniform resource locator (URL). The established remote engineering laboratory at Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) demonstrates the efficiency of proposed SWS and authentication method.

Capacity Building Through Strengthening Professional Skills in Engineering Graduates

Engineering programs globally are rich in technical contents in order to meet and satisfy accreditation organizations requirements. However, most of these programs in recent years came to conclusions that most of students and graduates could be better served if engineering programs could include emphasis on professional or soft skills. Although some of these skills are required and often emphasized by accreditation bodies, mastering in them require vision, planning, and allocation of time and budget by academic institutions. Furthermore, these skills must be embedded in the curriculum from the freshman year. The State of Qatar, a small country in the Middle East, has developed and implemented a national vision for the country known as Vision 2030 [1, 2]. One of the major pillars in the national Vision 2030 is the Capacity Building by providing quality education and training for the nation in particular for the younger generation with the leadership aspiration. Texas A&M University has established a branch campus in Qatar and has been offering four engineering degree programs since 2003. This branch campus has been exceptionally successful in offering quality engineering degree programs with a high emphasis on developing and instilling professional skills in its graduates through a variety of opportunities created and implemented by the faculty. This paper presents some of these programs introduced by faculty to further build students’ professional skills and review some of the outcomes achieved over the past decade.

A Vessel Scheduling Problem with Special Cases

We study the inventory and distribution operations encountered in oil and petrochemical industry. We show some special cases for the NP-complete problem, and propose polynomial time solution methods. We propose two approaches for the main problem. One of them makes use of the minimum cost flow formulation of the same problem under some assumptions, and the other one uses Benders Decomposition. In addition, we propose another problem and its formulation which involves time-windows for delivery, for which the same approaches can be applied. However, methodology or the results for the latter problem are not given.