Speakers and committee

Dr. Pascal Van Hentenryck is the director of the NSF AI Institute for Advances in Optimization and the A. Russell Chandler III Chair and Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Several of his optimization systems have been in commercial use for more than 20 years. His current research focuses on AI Engineering with applications in energy systems, supply chains and manufacturing, and mobility. Van Hentenryck is a fellow of AAAI and INFORMS, and the recipient of numerous research and teaching awards.

Dr. Joshua Auld is the Manager of the Transportation Systems and Mobility Group in the Vehicle and Mobility Simulations Department at Argonne National Laboratory. He is the lead designer of the POLARIS transportation simulation system. His research focuses on traveler behavior and decision making - from both a modeling and data collection perspective - and the impact that connectivity, automation and control have on travel demand, transportation and energy. Dr. Auld received his Doctorate from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2011 in Civil and Materials Engineering.

Dr. Vince Bernardin is a Vice President of Caliper Corporation.  Vince has project experience in twenty-seven states and three continents developing and applying statewide, urban, and corridor-level travel forecasting models. He has managed and contributed to the development of more statewide models than anyone else and was the first to use big data for statewide modeling (2010) and for activity-based modeling (2016). Vince holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, and an MS and Ph.D.in Transportation Engineering from Northwestern University.

Susan Anderson is the Systems Technology Group Manager within ADOT’s Transportation Systems Management and Operations Division.  Susan has worked as a transportation engineer in Phoenix for over 20 years and has spent the last 13 years with ADOT.  Susan’s role with TSMO is allowing her to provide strategic vision and guidance for the implementation of ADOT’s ITS technologies and operations throughout the state.  

Dr. Srinivas Peeta is the Frederick R. Dickerson Chair and Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He's a Principal Research Faculty at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. Previously, he chaired the Transportation Network Modeling Committee at the TRB of the National Academies. He serves as an Associate Editor for Transportation Research Part B and is involved in multiple editorial boards. With over 490 publications, his work is influential in the transportation sector. He's given 600+ talks worldwide, securing $55 million in research funding. Notably, his expertise in dynamic traffic assignment has shaped the U.S. Department of Transportation's real-time route guidance strategies for advanced systems.

Dr. Hua Wei is an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University, specializing in the intersection of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and large-scale urban and societal systems. His research group has published numerous papers in top-tier AI conferences such as NeurIPS, KDD, AAAI, and IJCAI, and won the Best Paper Award at ECML-PKDD 2020. He has extensive experience organizing tutorials and workshops, including two tutorials at IEEE ITSC in 2020 and 2023, as well as the Data-driven Intelligent Workshop series.

Mr. Siwei Hu is a 5th year PhD student majoring in Civil and Environmental Engineering (transportation systems engineering) at University of California, Irvine. His research interests include transportation network modeling, activity-based travel demand modeling, equitable congestion pricing mechanisms in transportation. 

Edward (Eddie) Zhu is an avid high school researcher, who is interested in quantitative decision-making in complex systems. Currently, he is working under the mentorship of Dr. Xuesong (Simon) Zhou at Arizona State University's Science & Engineering program (ASU SCENE), ASU's flagship program providing high school students with cutting-edge research experience. Within SCENE, his research focuses on trajectory analysis, statistical techniques, and simulation modeling in transportation and other urban systems.

Dr. Ram Pendyala is the Director of the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University and serves as the Director of TOMNET, a USDOT-funded Tier 1 University Transportation Center. Previously, he was on the faculty at the University of South Florida and held the Frederick R. Dickerson Chair of Transportation at Georgia Tech. His expertise is in activity-travel behavior, focusing on factors influencing human mobility choices. He's published widely and held leadership roles in the Transportation Research Board, including Chair of the Traveler Behavior and Values Committee. He also served in leadership capacities for the International Association for Travel Behaviour Research. Dr. Pendyala holds a PhD and MS from the University of California at Davis, and a Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras.

Dr. Baloka Belezamo is a senior manager at the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) in the modeling and forecasting section. Previously, he served as a System Modeling Engineer for Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) in Phoenix and as an Analyst for INRO Consultants in Montreal, developers of the Emme transportation software. Dr. Belezamo earned his Doctorate from Arizona State University and an Executive MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management. He actively contributes to the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), serving on the Transportation Research Board (TRB) committee and chairing the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP). A registered Professional Engineer (P.E.) in Arizona, Dr. Belezamo is also a member of Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honor society

Dr. Marco Nie is currently a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University. He received his B.S. in Structural Engineering from Tsinghua University, his M.S. from National University of Singapore and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis.  Dr. Nie’s research covers a variety of topics in the areas of transportation systems analysis, transportation economics, and sustainable transportation. Dr. Nie had served as a member of the TRB committees on Transportation Network Modeling and Traffic flow Theory and Characteristics.   He is currently an Associate Editor for Transportation Science, an Area Editor for Networks and Spatial Economics, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Transportmetrica-B and Transportation Research Part B. Dr. Nie’s research has been supported by National Science Foundation, Transportation Research Board, US Department of Transportation, US Department of Energy, and Illinois Department of Transportation.

Dr. Xuegang (Jeff) Ban is the William and Marilyn Conner Endowed Professor with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of Washington. His research interests are in Transportation Network System Modeling and Simulation, and Urban Traffic Modeling and Control. His recent works focus on applying optimization, control, and ML/AI methods to the understanding and modeling of emerging technologies/systems in transportation such as Connected & Automated vehicles, New Mobility Services, and Transportation Electrification. 

Dr. Connie Li is the President of TranSmart.  She has more than 30 years of experience in the advanced technology areas in transportation engineering industry. Dr. Li founded TranSmart Technologies in 1996, a multi-disciplinary full-service engineering consulting firm providing services in civil/electrical/structural/traffic engineering, multimodal/transit, and ITS/innovative technology in transportation industry. Dr. Li earned her Bachelor, Master, and PhD degrees in three languages across three countries. After having obtained her bachelor’s degree from the Civil Engineering Department at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, she won a coveted scholarship to University of Tokyo, Japan, where she earned her master’s degree in Transportation Engineering. Dr. Li earned her PhD degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a registered Professional Engineer in multiple States in the US.

Dr. Arup Dutta is the Program Manager for the Travel Demand Modeling Program at the  Maricopa Association of Governments in Phoenix, Arizona.  His primary areas of expertise include travel demand modeling and travel forecasting. He has a Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering with a Computer Science Minor Degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Masters degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Dr. Changhyun Kwon is an associate professor in Industrial and Systems Engineering at KAIST and directs the Computational Optimization Methods (COMET) Lab. His research focuses on computational optimization for transportation and logistics systems, with interests in systems analysis and service operations. His work has been backed by organizations like the National Research Foundation of Korea, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. from Pennsylvania State University and a B.S. from KAIST. In 2014, he was honored with the NSF CAREER award. Before joining KAIST in 2023, he served at the University at Buffalo, receiving the UB Exceptional Scholar: Young Investigator Award in 2015, and also taught at the University of South Florida. Dr. Kwon is an active member of INFORMS and TRB.

Mr. Shuyao Hong is the Emerging Technology Program Manager at the Maricopa Association of Government (MAG). He leads MAG’s Emerging Technology Program with the goal of enabling the region to respond and adapt to future transportation innovations. In addition, he also works extensively on data analysis and visualization on big mobility datasets. Before joining MAG, he graduated from the Arizona State University with a master’s degree in Geography.

Mr. Haidong Zhu is a Senior Transportation Project Manager at Maricopa Association of Governments. He holds Master’s degree in Urban Planning and Policy with a specialization in Transportation from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Arizona. Haidong enjoys his work in travel demand modeling, data science and problem solving.