M. Rapik Saat Current Address: 205 N. Matthews, B-118 ? Urbana, IL 61801 USA ? (217) 721-4448 ? mohdsaat@uiuc.edu

EXPERTISE & AREAS OF INTEREST  Decision Analysis, Rail Hazardous Materials Transportation Risk , Operations Research, Geographic Information System (GIS)   "Mr. Saat is a graduate student pursuing his PhD in Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois. He is originally from Malaysia and came to the US to study civil engineering at the University of Illinois in 1999 where he completed his BS in 2003, and his MS in 2005. His interests include Transportation Risk Analysis, Normative Decision Making, Data Mining and Operations Research. His dissertation research deals with railroad tank car safety and hazardous materials transportation risk. He has been involved in hazardous materials and tank car safety research for over five years. He supervises the Railway Supply Institute-Association of American Railroads Tank Car Safety Research Project data collection effort at the U of I and has conducted several hazardous materials transportation risk analyses in connection with his research. He has presented his research at the World Congress on Railway Research, INFORMS, TRB, where he has also published a paper. The methods Mr. Saat is developing can be applied to a variety of tank car safety design optimization problems and were used to evaluate the effectiveness of options considered by the AAR in 2006 in their initiative developing a new specification for tank cars transporting Toxic Inhalation Hazard (TIH) materials."

EDUCATION

  UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN                                          

    Bachelor of Science in Civil & Environmental Engineering, Dec 2003                               

Primary Area in Railroad Engineering/ Transportation System               Cumulative GPA: 3.52/4.00         

    Master of Science in Civil & Environmental Engineering, May 2005                               

Primary Area in Construction Management & Railroad Engineering     Cumulative GPA: 3.97/4.00         

    Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) in Civil & Environmental Engineering, Expected Graduation May 2008                               

Primary Area in Railroad Engineering & Decision Analysis                      Cumulative GPA: 3.97/4.00         

WORK & RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

University of Illinois, Urbana – Champaign Railroad Engineering Program

Graduate Research Assistant (Jan 2004 -Current)

• Developing a risk model to evaluate the effects of rerouting railroad hazardous materials transportation
• Developing a normative decision analysis model to determine the optimal railroad tank car safety design for transporting hazardous materials.
• Developing a risk model to optimize railroad tank car design to minimize accident-caused releases.
• Evaluating a railroad tank car top-fitting device to minimize non-accident-caused releases.

University of Illinois, Urbana – Champaign Railroad Engineering Program

Project Manager/Senior Data Analyst (Jan 2004 -Current)

• Coordinating a group of undergraduate research assistants in managing database and information in- and out-flow under the RSI-AAR[1] Railroad Tank Car Safety Research and Test Project.
• Coordinating the preparation of an industry-wide annual hazardous material transportation report for the AAR.

University of Illinois, Urbana – Champaign Railroad Engineering Program

Data Analyst (March 2001 – Dec 2003)

• Developed IlliTank, a railroad tank car-sizing program for preliminary design.
• Analyzed and improved data input implementation for Tank Car Accident Database (TCAD) under the RSI¹-AAR² Railroad Tank Car Safety Research and Test Project.

PUBLICATIONS

l              Saat, M.R, C.P.L. Barkan, T.T. Treichel, Statistical Approach to Estimating Surge Pressure Reduction Devices’ Performance. Publication RA-04-02A,
Association of American Railroads, Washington, D.C., 2004.

l              Saat, M.R., C.P.L. Barkan, Release Risk as Metric for Evaluating Tank Car Safety Performance, in press Transportation Research Record, No. 1916, 2005, pp. 78-87,
TRB  National Research Council, Washington, D.C., 2005.

l              Saat, M.R., Safety Analyses of Non-Accident and Accident-Caused Releases from Railroad Tank Cars, Master Thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL,  2005.

HONORS AND ACTIVITIES

• University of Illinois Pre-doc Fellowship and Graduate Assistantship (Jan 2004 -Current)
• 2002 AREMA³  Educational Foundation Undergraduate Scholarship Award
• Member of INFORMS⁴, Chi Epsilon, AREMA and TRB⁵.

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