Kevin Heaslip, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Center Director
[email protected]
As Director of the Center for Transportation Research and a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Dr. Heaslip conducts research on intelligent transportation systems, connected and autonomous vehicles, and infrastructure resilience, emphasizing the role of cybersecurity in the transportation domain. His work addresses critical issues in transportation safety and the integration of technology to enhance mobility and protect critical infrastructure from cyber threats. Dr. Heaslip has led numerous research initiatives funded by organizations such as the U.S. Department of Transportation and the National Science Foundation, making contributions to the advancement of secure and innovative transportation systems. He earned a BS and MS degree from Virginia Tech in Civil & Environmental Engineering and a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in Civil & Environmental Engineering. Prior to UT-Knoxville, Dr. Heaslip was a faculty member at Utah State University and Virginia Tech.
Projects:
Y1 –
Project 7: Impact of Automated Port Operations on Landslide Freight Corridor Performance: Opportunities, Barriers, and Future Directions with the Port of Long Beach
Y2 –
Project 7 – Delivery Deserts: Mapping, Understanding, and Overcoming Service Challenges
Shailesh Chandra, Cal State Long Beach, EWFD Director
[email protected]
Co-PI Chandra has worked with the Caltrans and the State of California through various tools and guidance. He has been actively involved with collaborative work with the Ports of Long Beach and LA as well as the City of Long Beach in identifying solutions to congestion, noise pollution, and sustainability. As an affiliated faculty to two UTCs, he has taken up leadership roles in advancing freight transportation solutions to highway congestion for California and the neighboring states of Arizona and Nevada. He has also been actively collaborating with public and private entities in trucking (such as the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center and American Transportation Research Institute), California Trucking Association, and the Volvo Group. These entities have been well-recognized for their contribution to solving truck driver shortages, green technologies for freight truck fleet, and improving trucking infrastructure that is crucial in contributing to an efficient supply chain ecosystem.
Projects:
Y1 –
Project 7: Impact of Automated Port Operations on Landslide Freight Corridor Performance: Opportunities, Barriers, and Future Directions with the Port of Long Beach
Y2 –
Project 8 – Co-locating Electric Charging Stations and Parking Facilities for Agricultural Freight Trucks for Efficient and Resilient Agricultural Supply Chain in California
Project 9 – Corridor Planning Tool for Efficient and Resilient Agricultural Supply Chain in California
Lee Han, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
[email protected]
Co-PI Han is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and an Oak Ridge National Lab Collaborating Scientist at the University of Tennessee. His fields of expertise and research interests include traffic engineering, application of advanced technologies to transportation, intelligent transportation systems (ITS), system modeling and simulations, traffic flow theory, traffic operations, transportation data and information systems, emergency evacuation and management, crash records and analysis, transportation logistics, operations research, and 3D visualizations. Since 1985, Han has been actively involved in research activities in the area of transportation and traffic engineering. In terms of externally sponsored projects, he was instrumental towards securing, managing, and conducting research studies. The total expenditure of all the projects he is involved in tops $10 million during the past decade.
Projects:
Y1 –
Project 5: Shippers’ Behavior Study Through Developing and Calibrating their Utility Functions
Salvador Hernandez, Oregon State University, Engagement Director
[email protected]
Co-PI Hernandez has over 15 years of researching and utilizing large scale disaggregate datasets for developing strategic, tactical, and operational models to address transportation safety, supply chain and logistics problems. He helped EL Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization evaluate park and ride facilities and warehouse locations and helped Texas DOT analyze real-time commercial traffic data.
Projects:
Y1 –
Project 3: Generating Reliable Freight Disruption Measures with Freight Telematics Data
Y2 –
Project 2 – Generating reliable freight disruption measures with freight telematics data (Year 2)
Steven Xiaochun Jiang, North Carolina A&T State University, Diversity Director
[email protected]
Co-PI Jiang is junior faculty at NCAT. Research Interests include modeling human performance in complex systems, usability engineering, and visual analytics. Applications include manufacturing, construction, aviation, healthcare and military.
Projects:
Y2 –
Project 12 – Meta-Heuristic Optimization of Last Mile Deliveries by Electric Vehicles in Rural Areas Using Synchronized Routing and Resupply Strategies
Mingzhou Jin, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
[email protected]
PI Jin has conducted more than 30 projects to solve freight transportation and supply chain problems. At the national level, he has developed simulation and optimization models and tools for USDOT and US DHS for the national freight network and waterways, focusing on resiliency and security. Regionally, he has developed intermodal transportation freight simulation models for the states of Mississippi and Louisiana. For corporations, his developed tools helped Nissan optimize their finished vehicle delivery, Lockheed Martin improve their supply chain management, FedEx improve their transportation workforce scheduling, K&S Customer Warehousing investigate alternative supply network, and Consolidated Nuclear Complex implement optimized inventory and logistics operations. He has also helped various industry associates solve their issues, such as designing alternative routes for American Trucking Associations, developing models and algorithms for automatic warehouse design and operations for Material Handling Industry, designing furniture supply chain network for American Furniture Foundation, and evaluating life-cycle benefits and cost for railways and trucking with OnTrackNorthAmerica.
Projects:
Y1 –
Project 2: Intermodal Solutions for Freight Flows in Southwest U.S.
Y2 –
Project 10 – Risk-Informed Stochastic Programming with Applications to Inland Flash Flooding of Roadway Freight Networks
Marcella Kaplan, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
[email protected]
Co-PI Kaplan is a Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Transportation Research, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Dr. Kaplan earned her BS, MS, and doctoral degrees in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech. Her work addresses critical issues in transportation safety and mobility with particular emphasis on multi-modal transportation technologies, last-mile logistics, integration of technology-enabled mobility options to provide safe, accessible, and sustainable transportation. Kaplan focuses on equitable transportation research to identify and address disparities in access to transportation resources, transportation system modeling and simulations, and development of new, science-based approaches with practical applications and adaptable implementation.
Projects:
Y2 –
Project 7 – Delivery Deserts: Mapping, Understanding, and Overcoming Service Challenges
David Porter, Oregon State University
[email protected]
Co-PI Porter has completed 40 successful research project as principal investigator (PI) or co-PI for different organizations, including the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), United States Postal Service, Oregon Department of Transportation, and private industry. His research focuses on the design, modeling, and performance evaluation of data collection systems with a strong emphasis on the development of quantitative methodologies to understand the impact that the implementation and use of information technologies has on system performance in application domains such as manufacturing, intralogistics, and transportation. PI Porter’s research group recently developed GTFS-ride, an extension to the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data standard that captures historic states of a transit network with associated ridership levels.
Projects:
Y2 –
Project 3 – A Sustainable Micromobility Framework for Freight Deliveries in Urban Environments
Luca Quadrifoglio, Texas A&M University
[email protected]
Co-PI Quadrifoglio graduated with the laureate in chemical engineering from the Politecnico of Milan and then received his M.S. and Ph.D. (2005) degrees from the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). After one year as a postdoc at USC, he joined the faculty of the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Texas A&M University in 2006. Dr. Quadrifoglio’s research interests are related to the broad field of Operations Research, primarily focused on-demand services. He published his research in more than 70 scholarly peer reviewed journals. His research has been funded with more than $4M in grants, attracting US federal interest and international collaboration. He won the 2006 Pritsker Doctoral Dissertation Award (3rd place), the 2004 Council of University Transportation Center (CUTC) National Student Award for best publication in Science and Technology, the 2015 Fulbright Award for Teaching & Research.
Projects:
Y1 –
Project 8: Innovative Scheduling Algorithms to Improve Port Operations
Hector Vergara, Oregon State University
[email protected]
Co-PI Vergara is an Associate Professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Oregon State University. Dr. Vergara received his M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Oregon State University in 2005 and his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from University of Arkansas in 2012. Dr. Vergara’s research focuses on the application of operations research methods to problems in transportation, logistics and distribution, facility location, and network design. Dr. Vergara is a member of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) and the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS).
Projects:
Y1 –
Project 4: Impact of Multimodal Freight Network on Private Sector Global Distribution
Y2 –
Project 5 – Impact of Multimodal Freight Network on Private Sector Global Distribution (Phase 2)
Bruce Wang, Texas A&M University, Research Director
[email protected]
Co-PI Wang has covered a variety of topics with a focus on intelligent transportation and with a system’s approach, and particularly has worked with the USACE on significant waterway-oriented national multimodal system problems such as dredging budget optimization, studied truck parking issues on a national scope to address the truck parking capacity shortage problems, port and terminal operations for efficiency as well as truck drayage operations to improve the intermodal efficiency.
Projects:
Y1 –
Project 1: U.S. Freight Network Resiliency Analysis
Y2 –
Project 4 – Shipper’s utility functions according to commodity groups and freight modal split
Yunlong Zhang, Texas A&M University
[email protected]
Co-PI Zhang is a Professor at the Zachry Department of Civil & Environment Engineering at Texas A&M University and also holds a joint appointment with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. Dr. Zhang has more than 35 years of professional experience as an engineer, educator, and researcher in transportation engineering. He has conducted scholarly and practical research in many areas of transportation engineering, including modeling, simulation, and analysis of traffic flow, traffic control devices and signal systems, safety analysis, and modeling and evaluation of advanced technologies such as connected and autonomous vehicles. One of his particular strengths is artificial intelligence applications in transportation, and he served as a long time member and research sub-committee chair of TRB’s committee Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Computing. He has published over 130 journal papers including many papers in top journals such as IEEE transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, and Transportation Research Parts A, B, C, D, E and F.
Projects:
Y2 –
Project 1- Estimation of logistic transportation system performance under extreme weather condition: A data-driven approach
Yang Zhou, Texas A&M University
[email protected]
Co-PI Zhou earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his Master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He currently serves as an Assistant Professor in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Texas A&M University. In 2023, he was honored as the Career Initiation Fellow by the Texas A&M Institute of Data Science. Dr. Zhou specializes in connected automated vehicle control, traffic flow analysis, AI applications in transportation, and high-fidelity simulations. Before joining Texas A&M, he served as a research associate, supported by both the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Industry and System. Dr. Zhou has published more than 50 articles in top-tier transportation journals, including Transportation Research Part B, Transportation Research Part C, and IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems. In terms of service to the academic community, Dr. Zhou is a committee member of the Transportation Research Board’s Traffic Flow Theory Committee, the American Society of Civil Engineering Safety and TDI-AI Committees, and the Editorial Board for Transportation Research Part C.
Projects:
Y2 –
Project 6 – Equity Embedded Hybrid Truck-Drone Delivery Routing Design for Rural Areas
Bo Zou, University of Illinois Chicago, T2C Director
[email protected]
Co-PI Zou and his colleagues at UIC and his colleagues provided Illinois DOT with technical assistance to build Illinois’ first inland waterway freight transportation performance database. They helped the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) establish a comprehensive framework for assessing the impacts of intercity and high-speed rail in the US. Their first-of-its-kind comprehensive study sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to understand the impact of flight delays in the US.
Projects:
Y1 –
Project 6: Understanding and Modeling Middle-Mile Logistics Automation
Y2 –
Project 11 – Comprehensive Modeling and Analysis of Clean Energy Transition in Freight Transportation: Stakeholder Behavior, Infrastructure Planning, and Environmental and Community Impacts
