Current doctoral students

Qianni Wang is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University. Her research interests include traffic network modeling and using optimization and economics (game theory and information design) to improve the efficiency and sustainability of transportation systems. Qianni obtained her M.S. degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Northwestern in 2023. Prior to that, she completed her B.S. degree in 2019 and M.S. degree in 2022 in Transportation Engineering at Southwest Jiaotong University.

Tianxing Dai is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University. His research interests include system design and modeling for alternative modes of transportation (such as public transit and shared bikes), with the focus on accessibility and equity. Before coming to Northwestern, Tianxing obtained his B.S. degree in Civil Engineering with a minor in Urban and Regional Studies from University of California, Los Angeles in 2021.

Hongyuan Yang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University. His research interests include freight transportation network design, public transit systems design, and management of omni-channel retailing.  Hongyuan is the recipient of Walter P. Murphy Fellowship. He obtained his M.S. degree with distinction in Project Management from Northwestern University in 2017 and his B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2015.

Hongyu Zheng is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University. Before joining Northwestern, Hongyu obtained his M.S. degree (with honor) in Transportation in 2019 and his B.E. degree in Civil Engineering in 2016 both from Zhejiang University, China. His research interests include transportation economics and data-driven modeling.

Jiayang Li is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University, advised by Prof. Marco Nie and co-advised by Prof. Zhaoran Wang. Jiayang’s research focuses on both the theoretical foundations of optimization tools and their applications in traffic management and machine learning. Together with his collaborators, Jiayang has developed many bilevel optimization algorithms and has applied them to many practical tasks ranging from traffic network design and hyperparameters tuning. Prior to joining Northwestern, he obtained his B.S. degree from Tsinghua University in 2019.

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Former doctoral students

Kenan Zhang received her PhD in Transportation and her M.S. in statistics from Northwestern University in 2021.  Her research interests range from shared and on-demand mobility services, traffic management inspired by connected autonomous vehicles, to machine learning in transportation. She was the recipient of McCormick School of Engineering Terminal Year Fellowship, Northwestern Transportation Center Dissertation Year Fellowship, WTS President’s Scholarship in Greater Chicago, and the Cabell Fellowship. She was also selected as one of the 2020 CEE Rising Stars by Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to joining Northwestern, Kenan obtained her M.S. degree in Architecture-Engineering-Construction Management from Carnegie Mellon University in 2015 and her B.S. degree (with honor) in Civil Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2014. Kenan joined EPFL as an Assistant Professor in 2022.

Sida Luo is a Professor  in the School of Traffic and Transportation at Beijing Jiaotong University, and chosen by the University in “One-hundred” Outstanding Scholar Project. He received  his Ph.D from Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University in 2020. His research interests include but are not limited to Public transport modeling, MaaS, traffic design and management and urban transport planning. He published several papers in Transportation Research Part A, B and C, and is trying to apply the proposed methodologies to the practice of transit network optimization in Suzhou City. Before joining Northwestern, he obtained his B.S. degree from Southeast University in 2015, majoring in Traffic Engineering (Mao Yisheng Class).

John Miller is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management, United States Air Force Academy, CO. Lt Col Miller has served on the Headquarters Air Staff and MAJCOM staff levels, in addition to serving in the Space Vehicles directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory. He most recently served as the Deputy Chief of the Joint All-Domain Command and Control Analysis Division in the Studies, Analyses, and Assessment Directorate of the Air Staff. He has multiple publications in the areas of transportation, logistics, and applied optimization. He received a PhD degree  from Northwestern University in 2018, a Master of Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007, and a Bachelor of Science from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 2003.

Peng (Will) Chen received his bachelor degree in Civil Engineering & Economics from Tsinghua University (2011). He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (Transportation) from Northwestern University (2016). His Ph.D. research focused on the design, optimization, and simulation of transportation networks. He is now working as a quantitative strategist at the FICC division in Huatai Securities (Shenzhen, China), developing quantitative strategies in China government bonds, government bond futures, and interest rate swaps. He previously worked as a quantitative analyst in Goldman Sachs (New York), Morgan Stanley (New York), and China Merchants Bank Wealth Management (Shenzhen, China).

Qianfei Li received a bachelor degree in Civil Engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology and a Master degree in Industrial and Operations Engineering from University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. He received his Ph.D. in Transportation Systems Analysis and Planning from Northwestern University in 2015. His research focused on applying operations research to solve real world transportation problems. Qianfei now works as a product directer of Youzan, an e-commerce SaaS company, where he leads product teams to build e-commerce data intelligence and PaaS systems. He previously worked as a product director of Aibee, an AI company applying computer version and VR in retail sector. Before Aibee, he worked as a technical product manager of Alibaba – Damo Academy, where he specialized in building products backed by machine learning and operations research.

Yang Liu is jointly appointed as an Associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Management at National University of Singapore. She received her B.S. from Tsinghua University (2005), MPhil from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (2007) and Ph.D. from Northwestern University (2013). Previously, Dr. Liu worked as a consultant at Cambridge Systematics and provided modeling expertise to public agencies such as Chicago Department of Transportation.  Currently, she serves on the editorial boards of Transportation Science (Associate Editor), Transportation Research Part C, and Socio-Economic Planning Sciences (Associate Editor). She is a co-chair of WTC Shared Logistics and Transportation Systems Committee, a member of Transportation Research Board Standing Committee on Emerging and Innovative Public Transport and Technologies (AP020) and Transportation Network Modeling (AEP40), a member of the Chinese Overseas Transportation Association (COTA) Board of Directors, and a member of WCTRS Special Interest Group Transport Theory and Modelling.

Jun Xie is a Professor in the School of Transportation and Logistics at Southwest Jiaotong University, China. He received a Ph.D. degree from Tongji University, China and a BS degree from Jilin University. He visited Northwestern University as a visiting doctoral student between 2010 and 2012. He spent another two years at Northwestern University as a postdoctoral research before joining Southwest Jiaotong University in 2017. 

Xing Wu is an Associate Professor of Transportation Engineering in the Department of Civil Engineering at Lamar University.  He  received a Ph.D. degree in Transportation from Northwestern University in 2011 and his dissertation is entitled “Routing and traffic assignment in stochastic networks”.   Prior to joining Northwestern, Xing received a M.S. degrees from Carnegie mellon University (Civil Engineering), a MS in Management Science and Engineering (2005) and a BS in Civil Engineering (2002) from Tsinghua University in China.