With the title “Performance Evaluation of Adaptive Traffic Control Algorithms with Real Diverse Traffic Data for Future Measure of Effectiveness” – IEEE BRACU SBC successfully organized another far-sighted virtual talk session that transfixed the audience with the keynote speaker’s crackerjack harangue. Episode 2 was a continuing session of the Technical Webinar Series 2021 hosted by the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE), Brac University in association with IEEE BRACU SBC. The virtual session was held at Zoom Platform on Friday, 26 March 2021.

We invited Dr. Muhammad Zafrul Hasan, an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering, Texas A&M International University as the keynote speaker of this session. As an expert practitioner in the research field with an elongated prolific career as an impactful academician, Prof. Hasan has been teaching Embedded Systems, Intro to Control Systems, Robotics, and Automation, Software Development, Sys Eng Senior Design Project at Texas A&M. His current research projects are namely Smart Cities: Adaptive Traffic Light Control, Smart Health: Blood Flow Controller, Smart Systems: Energy-Efficient Processors, Smart Buildings: Energy Efficient Elevator Control and so on. Prof. Hasan’s research interests include the design, implementation, and testing of embedded systems for energy conservation, performance evaluation of computer architectures, and behavioral synthesis and testing of digital systems. He was granted by the government of the USA for his several scholarly contributions. He is an awardee of the prestigious Hashimoto Fellowship Award by the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

The webinar commenced with Prof. AKM Abdul Malek Azad’s warm introduction. He is a Senior Member, IEEE USA inc and currently serving as our Branch Counselor. Both Prof. Azad and Prof. Hasan had worked together for over 6 years. In the webinar, Prof. Hasan talked about the broader aspects of the problem area. Traffic congestion has been affecting people’s lives in the developed country. Due to heavy traffic, a huge amount of time is being spared in each day of a person’s life. To create a feasible solution of this problem, Dr. Hasan and his team have been working on an Adaptive Traffic Control Algorithm. A traffic signal system incorporated with a more accurate responsive algorithm that can work based on real-life traffic characteristics is surely deemed as a top-notch initiative that can help mitigate the waiting time of the vehicles in busy cities. It can also curb frequent vehicular accidents. A more prospective approach to this research is to integrate AI and Machine Learning in the algorithm. Under his supervision, his research students have carried out this study in the USA. He shared with us the overall methodology, mathematical calculations of his research as well as the findings of the simulation. He briefly discussed the final results and analysis of his research work.

The webinar is ended with an engaging Q&A session. Dr Hasan answered a few questions asked from the audience panel. The discernment of this session will surely help our undergraduate students to think about real-life problems like Traffic Congestion. It will enable them to cater excellent research works addressing issues that can alter human life and make the community a safer place for living.