Mr. Wang is a senior transportation advisor at the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC). In this position, he works with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) of USDOT to administer the Appalachian Development Highway System (ADHS) under the US federal surface transportation legislation. He is also a program director for the Appalachian Local Access Road (LAR) program responsible for approval and implementation of the LAR projects across 13 Appalachian states.

Mr. Wang is a graduate of USDOT's Eisenhower Graduate Research Fellow program and obtained his M.S. in Transportation from Morgan State University and held B.S. of Civil Engineering from the Beijing University of Technology. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Maryland and members of several TRB and AASHTO committees. He was a founding member and a past president of COTA and is currently leading the effort of organizing the annual COTA-World Bank China Transport Forum at CICTP.

Dr. Jian john Lu is Dean of College of Transportation Engineering at Tongji University. Before that he was a full professor of the Transportation Group in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of South Florida. His main research and teaching interests focus on Transportation Safety, Intelligent Transportation Systems, Traffic Control and Management, and Transportation Infrastructure Disaster Risk Assessment and Management. Dr. Lu got his Ph.D. degree from University of Texas at Austin in 1990. Then, he worked in New York State Department of Transportation as a research specialist and University of Alaska Fairbanks as an assistant professor between 1990 and 1995. In 1995, he joined the faculty in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of South Florida and became tenured full professor in 2004. While he works as a professor in USA, he also spends his great efforts in developing transportation research programs in China. In 2000, Dr. Lu was awarded “Cheung Kong Scholar” Program Chair Professorship (Chang Jiang Scholar) and joined Southeast University in Nanjing, where he helped the College of Transportation to develop their transportation program and performed many research projects that were sponsored by national transportation agencies and province transportation agencies. In 2009, he was given the opportunity to serve as a “Zhi-Yuan Chair Professor” in the Transportation Program in School of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Civil Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. In January 2010, Dr. Lu was awarded the “1000Plan” scholar by the central government of China. In 2014, he joined Tongji University as the Dean of College of Transportation Engineering. Dr. Lu has engaged in teaching and research in fields of transportation safety, transportation management and planning, intelligent transport systems, systems engineering, transportation disaster management, etc. for more than 30 years. He has completed over 100 projects funded by US federal and state governments as well as China transportation agencies at national and province levels. He has published 7 books and over 100 technical papers in high impact international journals. Dr. Lu is currently serving as associate editor (area editor in transportation safety) for international Journal of Transportation Safety and Security, editorial board member for international Journal of Advances in Transportation Studies, and editorial board member for international Journal of Applied Sciences.

Dr. Yu is the Dean of the College of Science, Engineering and Technology at Texas Southern University. He has been in this position since September 2009. In this position, he serves as chief academic and administrative officer of the College under the general direction of Provost, and provides leadership in formulating educational policies. He is responsible for supervising the College’s daily operations, managing the College’s budget, and leading fund-raising efforts. Academic departments under his direction include Aviation Science and Technology, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering, Environmental and Interdisciplinary Sciences, Industrial Technology, Mathematics, Physics, and Transportation Studies. He also oversees a number of significant research centers and outreach programs in the college.Dr. Yu originally joined the faculty in the Department of Transportation Studies in 1994, and is currently serving as a Professor of Transportation Planning and Management as well as Co-PI of NSF-CREST CRCN. In his tenure at TSU, he has secured over 50 externally funded projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), and other public and private organizations. Dr. Yu has been the driving force in the development of highly recognized academic programs and top-of-the-line transportation laboratory facilities. He secured 2 million dollars from the Port of Houston Authority to implement a new academic program in Maritime Transportation Management and Security. The advanced laboratories that were developed under his leadership include full-motion driving simulator, mobile traffic lab, real-time traffic monitoring system Mini-TranStar, and Portable Emission Measurement System (PEMS). Dr. Yu also provided strong support to different levels of cooperation through inter-institutional programs. He has facilitated the establishment of the Confucius Institute at Texas Southern University in collaboration with Beijing Jiaotong University.Besides his administrative accomplishments, Dr. Yu also made great academic and scholarly innovations. He has published more than 200 research papers and made over 100 presentations. Dr. Yu is an active member of Institute of the Transportation Engineers (ITE), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the Transportation Research Board (TRB), and a number of other professional organizations. He also holds the membership in numerous committees as well as other regional, national, and international councils, task forces, and organizations. Dr. Yu is a professional engineer registered in the State of Texas. He received his Ph.D. degree in Civil/Transportation Systems Engineering from Queen’s University (Canada) in 1994, M.S. Degree in Production and Systems Engineering from Nagoya Institute of Technology (Japan) in 1988, and Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Transportation Management Engineering from Beijing Jiaotong University (China) in 1984.

A graduate of the Beijing Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture in China, she moved to the US in the mid-80’s and received her masters and doctorate degrees in civil engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1987 and 1991, respectively. She joined FIU in 1992, and ever since devoted her time and energy to the advancement of her department in various capacities. She specialized in computer applications to civil engineering problems, particularly transportation problems. Her research covered geographic information system (GIS), engineering databases, visualization techniques, transportation planning, transit planning and operations, new transit technologies, artificial neural networks, knowledge-based expert systems, optimization techniques, data analysis, and system modeling. 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.

Dr. Rongfang (Rachel) Liu has extensive experience in the area of intermodal transportation planning and engineering, environmental impact and major investment studies (EIS and MIS), and travel demand forecasting and simulation modeling. She has managed/conducted long-range transportation plans for different federal, state, and local government agencies and developed traffic engineering designs for various public and private sector clients. She has gained this broad-based experience through her various positions with consulting firms, research institutes, and government agencies as well as her extensive involvement with Transportation Research Board committees and modeling development task forces.

Combining her advanced educational background and diversified research experiences, Dr. Liu has a firm grasp of theoretical framework and principles of transportation engineering and planning. She also demonstrated her capability of implementing ideas and theories into real world projects through a number of research projects, professional affiliations, and extensive publications. Dr. Liu has presented and published a number of books, book chapters, and technical papers for renowned peer-reviewed transportation journals. She is also respected throughout the industry for her modeling skills and intermodal research.

Dr. Ping Yi is a professor in the Dept. of Civil Engineering of The Univ. of Akron. His educational background includes a PhD degree from University of Minnesota, a M.S. from Washington State University, and a B.S. from Wuhan University. His research mainly focuses on traffic control and safety, sensor and information technologies, as well as system reliability and statistical data modeling.

Dr. Yi was a research scientist and principal engineer in the Minnesota DOT, where he managed several federally funded ITS operational test projects over sensors testing, adaptive signals, advanced parking, and incident/special event management. After joining the academia, Dr. Yi has published widely in refereed journals and completed many federally and state funded projects. He has served many professional societies and committees such as ASCE, TRB, AASHTO, NRC-IDEA, etc.

Dr. Wang is a professor in both Civil and Environmental Engineering and Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington (UW). He serves as director for Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans), USDOT University Transportation Centre for Federal Region 10. He has conducted extensive research in traffic sensing, safety, transportation bigdata, artificial intelligence and advanced computing, traffic operations, etc. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles. He is an elected governor for the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Transportation and Development Institute (T&DI) Board, and will serve as president of T&DI in 2018. He is also a member on the IEEE Smart Cities Steering Committee and associate editor for both Journal of Transportation Engineering and Journal of ITS.

He has a Ph.D. in transportation engineering from the University of Tokyo (1998) and a master's degree in computer science from the UW. Dr. Wang’s active research fields include traffic sensing, e-science of transportation, transportation safety, etc. He has published over 110 peer reviewed journal articles and delivered more than 120 invited talks and nearly 200 other academic presentations.

Dr. Heng Wei has extensive research expertise and industrial experience in intelligent transportation systems, infrastructure-CAV nexus in traffic signal system design, AI-based Informatics and GIS in smart-city-oriented travel demand and environmental analytics. He has secured a great number of research grants from ODOT, FHWA, NSF, EPA, and USDOT UTCs as well. His research has resulted in 185 peer-reviewed and referred papers, and he is an author of one book and eight book chapters. He has been awarded with many professional prizes and honors, including University of Cincinnati (UC) CEAS Distinguished Researcher Award for Excellence in Research in 2013, 2015 and 2018, and Engineering Master Educator Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2014, and Beijing Overseas High-Caliber Talents Award in 2017. He has been nominated for multiple times as one of Honored Faculty/Staff Who Made a Real Difference in the Life of a UC Student. He is serving as the TRB Representative to UC and Advisor to the ITE Student Chapter at UC. He has served as a member of numerous outstanding professional committees, such as TRB Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Computing Applications (ABJ70), User Information Systems (AND 20), Transportation in Developing Countries (ABE90), and ASCE T&DI Committees on i) Advanced Technology and Transportation Safety, ii) Sustainability and Environment; and iii) CAV Impacts. He is the Chair of IEEE ITSS Travel Information and Traffic Management Committee, Chair of Energy and Environment Committee for the World Transportation Convention, and Past President of Chinese Overseas Transportation Association (COTA).

Dr. Yafeng Yin is a Professor at Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He works in the area of transportation systems analysis and modeling, and has published approximately 100 refereed papers in leading academic journals. Dr. Yin is the Editor-in-Chief of Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, one of the leading academic journals in the transportation domain. He is also an Associate Editor of Transportation Science, and serves on the editorial boards for another four transportation journals such as Transportation Research Part B: Methodological. He is a member of Transportation Economics Committee and International Cooperation Committee of Transportation Research Board.

Dr. Yin received his Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo, Japan in 2002, his master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 1996 and 1994 respectively.

Dr. Zhang is an expert of network modeling and system analysis with applications in air transportation, multimodal transportation, and shared mobility. Dr. Zhang aims at developing innovative methodologies and concepts for resilient, efficient, and sustainable transportation systems. She has published more than 20 papers in top transportation journals such as Transportation Research Part B, Part C, Part D, and Part E. Dr. Zhang is serving on the editorial board for Transportation Research Part C and is a reviewer for Transportation Science, Transportation Research Part A, Part B, Part C, Part D, Part E, Journal of Air Transport Management, Networks and Spatial Economics, Journal of Cleaner Production, Journal of Air Transport Management, Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems, European Journal of Operation Research etc. Dr. Zhang is actively involved in professional organizations. She is the committee member, research and paper review coordinators for Transportation Research Board (TRB) Airfield and Airspace Capacity and Delay (AV060) committee. Dr. Zhang is also serving as the President for Chinese Overseas Transportation Association (COTA).

Dr. Zhang holds Ph.D. and M.S. from the University of California Berkeley in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Bachelors from Southeast University of China in Transportation Engineering. Dr. Zhang is the recipient of the 2010 Fred Burggraf Award, for excellence in transportation research by researchers 35 years of age or younger, presented by TRB of the National Academies of Science.

Dr. Lei Zhang is Herbert Rabin Distinguished Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland – College Park (UMD). He is also the Director of the National Transportation Center at UMD – one of the five National University Transportation Centers funded by the US DOT. Dr. Zhang has published more than 200 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers on topics including transportation systems modeling and simulation, travel behavior and demand, transportation economics and policy, and innovative mobility and sustainability solutions. He has received external funding support from NSF, US DOT, US DOE, FHWA, SHRP2, NCHRP, and other federal and state agencies and private foundations, exceeding $25 million. Dr. Zhang has served in leadership roles at many conferences, expert panels, editorial boards and professional societies. Dr. Zhang is a recipient of the prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the TRB Fred Burggraf Award, U.S. Department of State APEC Science Prize, and six international best paper awards.

Dr. Lei Zhang is Herbert Rabin Distinguished Professor and Director of the National Transportation Center in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. He earned my Ph.D. (major: Transportation Engineering; minor: Operations Research in 2006) and M.S. (Applied Economics in 2005; Civil Engineering in 2002) degrees from the University of Minnesota, and B.S. (Civil Engineering in 2000) from Tsinghua University.