Joelle’s PhD topic is about Methods, Operations and Assessment of Train-Centric Railway Signalling Systems. She will work on the EU H2020 Shift2Rail funded project MOVINGRAIL which will be delivering breakthroughs for the deployment of train-centric signalling by defining operational implications, developing testing methods for ETCS Level 3 as well as assessing impacts of Virtual Coupling. Main interests are on multi-criteria impact assessment for market potential and operational scenarios for Virtual Coupling, as well as analysing and defining novel operational principles to enable safe train separation. Simulation will be integrated for identifying strategies for testing train-centric signalling components and enabling automated cooperative control of train convoys.

The activities will be performed in cooperation with other prominent universities and representatives from transport companies in Europe which are partners of the MOVINGRAIL project.

Joelle Aoun is a PhD researcher at the Department of Transport and Planning (T&P) at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands and the representative of her department at the Civil Engineering & Geosciences (CEG) PhD Council. She is a civil engineer graduated from the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (Lebanon) and specialized in transportation. Over the past years, Joelle got enrolled in several internships related to different civil engineering fields in structure and transportation. She carried out site supervision and design estimation for structural projects in Lebanon. She also participated in the integration of a feasible public bus transport system with the Keserwan-Ftouh Federation of Municipalities (Lebanon). In Greece, she worked on a project involving the operational and safety performance investigation of skew superelevation runoff. In 2018, Joelle was the President of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) in Lebanon, and she received a Certificate of Commendation for being awarded to the top 5% of all Student Organizations in the world.