Dr Vinayak Devendra Malaghan

Dr Vinayak Devendra Malaghan is a post-doctoral research fellow in the School of Civil, Structural, and Environmental Engineering at Trinity College Dublin. Currently, he is involved in the SPECTATOR project funded under the North-South Research Programme. A systemic approach to the sustainable, integrated, optimised electrification and automation of transportation networks is missing. This project aims to fill this gap by complementing the endeavour on both sides of the island with an all-Ireland approach to inform responses to challenges and opportunities brought by CAVs (Connected and Autonomous Vehicles) and EVs (Electric Vehicles) technologies.

Before joining TCD, he worked as an Institute postdoctoral fellow at IIT Hyderabad on emerging vehicle technologies (Advanced driving assistance Systems and self-driving vehicles), emphasising road safety using Instrumented vehicle data. He earned Joint Doctoral Degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad and Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. His Doctoral research focused on modelling geometric design consistency (operating speed and comfort thresholds) measures for two-lane rural highways using Naturalistic Driving Study (NDS) data. The insights from the study are useful to inspect the margin of safety for the side friction to predict the possibility of crashes on the horizontal curves. He has hands-on experience in data analytics and instrumenting vehicles (passenger cars and heavy vehicles) to collect NDS data.

During his doctoral and postdoctoral research studies, he got introduced to and consequently developed interest and expertise in multiple research areas, i.e., geometric design, driver behaviour, NDS, traffic operations and safety, data science, statistical methods, machine learning, road safety and CAVs. Before joining Doctoral studies, he worked as a Deputy Engineer in a consultancy firm named Lea Associates South Asia Pvt. Ltd. He pursued a master's in Transportation Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani (Pilani campus), India and under graduation in civil engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University, India.

He was awarded Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) and Swinburne University Postgraduate Research Award (SUPRA) fellowships to pursue joint Doctoral studies. He authored nine journal articles (seven first-authored during his PhD and two co-authored during PDF) in reputed international journals. Also, he attended seven renowned international conferences.