Biography
Dr. Fangda Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Industrial Engineering in the Department
of Mechanical Engineering at Western Carolina University. He obtained his doctoral
degree in industrial engineering and operations research in 2021 from University of
Massachusetts Amherst, where he also obtained his master's degree in mechanical engineering
and a Certificate in Statistical and Computational Data Science. After that, Dr. Zhang
has worked as a Postdoctoral Scientist and later a Research Scientist at the Research
Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Zhang's research
primarily focuses on human factors in transportation safety, driving automation, teen
driver safety, and driver training. He has authored/co-authored 21 peer-reviewed journal
articles, and had 25+ accepted conference proceedings, abstract, and presentation.
Dr. Zhang also greatly enjoys teaching and mentoring.
Teaching Interests
Human Factors; Engineering Programming; Regression Analysis; Design of Experiments;
Research Methods; Statistics; Statistical Quality Control; Usability
Research Interests
Human Factors in Transportation Safety; Driving Automation; Driver-Vehicle Interaction;
Teen Driver Safety; Driver Training
