Bio
Dr. Haowen Xu is a Research Scientist in the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He earned his Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering, along with a graduate certificate in Geoinformatics, from the University of Iowa in 2019. Prior to that, he completed his M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the same institution in 2015.
Dr. Xu’s research centers on advancing cyberinfrastructure, digital twins, visual analytics dashboards, mobile edge computing applications, Virtual Reality (VR) serious games, Large Language Model (LLM) applications, and cyber-physical systems. His work aims to enhance planning, management, experimental research, and data- and model-driven analytics in environmental and urban science domains. He has successfully designed and developed a wide range of research software, generative AI systems, and mobile/web applications for projects funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO), and Building Technologies Office (BTO), as well as other federal agencies, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Dr. Xu also serves as a Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI) for nationally significant projects supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E and NSRD programs. His domain interests include smart cities, intelligent transportation systems, smart buildings, human modeling, and water resources management (e.g., erosion and sediment transport, watershed planning, and hazard mitigation).
Dr. Xu has authored and co-authored over 20 peer-reviewed journal articles, with publications in prestigious journals such as IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Science of the Total Environment, Environmental Modelling & Software, Journal of Environmental Management, and Journal of Hydrology. In addition, he has contributed to over 30 peer-reviewed conference articles, showcasing his extensive engagement with the academic and research communities. He has been recognized with multiple research awards from prestigious national and international academic organizations, including the UNSW's International Conference on Computers & Industrial Engineering (CIE51) from Australia, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Conference on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Smart Systems (IEEE-MASS), the International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA), and the American Water Resources Association (AWRA). He is a co-organizer of the ACM-SIGSPATIAL’s International Workshop on Computational Transportation Science (IWCTS 2022), and he has been invited to present his research at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), and U.S. Army Engineer Institute for Water Resources (IWR).
Awards
- Best Research Paper Award from the 51st International Conference on Computers & Industrial Engineering (CIE51), UNSW, Australia -2024
- Best Poster Award from the 19th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Smart Systems (MASS) - 2022
- Most Creative Demonstration Award from IBPSA HackSimBuild competition in conjunction with Building Performance Analysis Conference and SimBuild - 2022
- Significant Event Award (SEA) – ORNL, United States Department of Energy (USDOE), Release of Real-time Ctwin v1.1 -- "The Chattanooga Digital Twin for Mobility/Transportation" - 2020
- National Science Foundation (NSF)Travel Awards for UCGIS Summer School - 2017
- Best Student Oral Presentation Award from the American Water Resources Association (AWRA)
- CGRER Travel Award - 2015