Arif Mohaimin Sadri, a doctoral candidate in the transportation area advised by Prof. Satish Ukkusuri, is the recipient of the 2016 Excellence in Research Award from the Purdue University Office of Interdisciplinary Graduate Programs for his successful interdisciplinary project entitled, "The Role of Social Capital, Personal Networks, & Early Responders in Post-disaster Recovery." This study was conducted as part of an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant and the 21st Century Grand Challenges project, an initiative created by President Barack Obama in 2013 to harness science, technology and innovation to solve important national or global problems. The interdisciplinary research team included Arif Sadri (Civil Engineering); Prof. Satish Ukkusuri (Civil Engineering); Prof. Seungyoon Lee (Communication); Prof. Rosalee Clawson (Political Science); Prof. Daniel Aldrich (Political science); Prof. Justin Seipel (Mechanical Engineering); Prof. Megan Sapp Nelson (Physical Sciences, Engineering, Technology); Prof. Daniel Kelly (Philosophy); and Prof. Abhijit Deshmukh (Industrial Engineering). Arif was invited to present his work at the 2016 RES/CON (formerly known as International Disaster Conference and Expo) earlier this year in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Arif joined Prof. Ukkusuri's Interdisciplinary Transportation Modeling and Analytics Lab in 2011 and he worked on several projects funded by National Science Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Indiana Department of Transportation among others. His research interests include Complex Networks, Community Resilience, Social and Information Networks, Big Data Analytics, Travel Behavior Modeling, Smart Travel, Interdisciplinary Transportation Modeling, Agent-based Modeling and Simulation, Game Theory, Traffic Assignment and Safety.