Past Events and Seminars

Abstract: As we push the boundaries of our engineering systems we are demanding more and more of our scientific and engineering capabilities. In order to meet demands such as increased energy efficiency, and increased performance we find ourselves needing to develop systems that are highly accurate, that have new adaptable capabilities and are very well informed of themselves and their surroundings. This challenges our conventional approach to problem solving, which is producing a very exciting and creative time for our field. To this end, the Virginia Tech Smart Infrastructure Laboratory leverages the most instrumented public building in the world for vibrations to carry out cutting edge research by challenging our conventional thinking of buildings and their human interaction.  

With this in mind, I will discuss the main points of the instrumentation endeavor of the Goodwin Hall building. A multi-year endeavor, created to develop a multidisciplinary test bed for a myriad of topics, such as: human localization, tracking and classification, structural modeling and validation, security and threat detection and energy efficient building systems. We will delve into a few of these topics in more detail, in particular the problem of human tracking and classification (i.e., gender) and gunshot detection and classification.

Bio: Pablo A. Tarazaga is an Associate Professor and the John R. Jones III Faculty Fellow at Virginia Tech in the Mechanical Engineering Department and is a Principal Faculty in the Myers-Lawson School of Construction. He currently directs the Virginia Tech Smart Infrastructure Laboratory (VTSIL) (http://vtsil.weebly.com ) and the Vibrations, Adaptive Structures and Testing (VAST) Laboratory (http://vastlab.weebly.com). His research focuses on the development of novel and fundamental insights that harness, measure, mitigate and analyze vibrations using complex multi physics modeling, innovative experimental testing and real-world implementations.  Applications include large scale building instrumentation for human localization and tracking, security and threat detection, emergency response an evacuation, and smart material applications for fluid structure interaction in drag reduction and non-contact fluid mixing. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Alpha Foundation, Virginia Space Grant Consortium, National Institute of Standard and Technologies, Association of American Railroads, Army, and Engineering Research and Development Center. Additionally, Pablo is the Faculty Principal in the Honors Residential Commons at Virginia Tech where he lives on campus with his family and 325 Honors students. He engages students in an extracurricular and co-curricular fashion to promote a more holistic education and student formation.

He was awarded the 2014 Dean's award for Outstanding New Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech and received the 2015 Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program Award.

Pablo holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA) and a B.S. from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez in Mechanical Engineering. He also carried out his post-doctoral studies at the University of Bristol, England.

For additional information, please contact Professor Onur Bilgen at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 848-445-5869