In Memoriam: Professor Fang Zhao: The Computing in Civil Engineering Community Loses a Great Friend

摘要

With sadness, we inform readers that Professor Fang Zhao passed away on December 7, 2010. At Florida International University, Fang was the interim chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering and deputy director of the Lehman Center for Transportation Research. She was also an active and valuable specialty editor of the ASCE Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering in the transportation engineering area. Fang graduated from the Beijing Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture in China, and then she moved to the United States in the mid-1980s and received her master's and doctorate degrees in civil engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1987 and 1991, respectively, under the direction of Professor Mary Lou Maher. She joined Florida International University in 1992 as an assistant professor and spent the remainder of her career at FIU. She specialized in computer applications to civil engineering problems, with a specific focus on transportation. Her research covered a wide range of computing topics. FIU Dean Amir Mirmiran stated, "She was a nationally recognized expert on GIS-T, especially on temporal GIS applications in transportation. For the last three years she led the department so ably as the interim chair, not only maintaining its operations, but also significantly enhancing its enrollment, degrees awarded, and research funding, as well as obtaining ABET accreditation of its two programs-civil and environmental." Fang was an amazing person who will be sorely missed by our community. In honor of her life and her dedication to helping this journal increase its publications in the transportation area, we dedicate this issue of the Journal to our friend and colleague, Professor Fang Zhao. We will miss you, Fang.