Honors and Awards

2000-2001: University of California Transportation Center (UCTC) doctoral dissertation award, $15,000.

2006: UIC College of Engineering Faculty Research Award.

2009: UIC College of Engineering Faculty Research Award.

Best paper awards:

a. “Development of a CO hot-spot screening model for toll highway facilities” the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC) Parker Award in January 2006 (co-authored with former MS student Dan Yu).

b. “Analysis of National County-level Heavy-duty Freight Truck Emissions”, Best Paper Award, 2nd prize, at the 2007 Transport Chicago Conference (co-authored with former MS student Joshua Auld).

c. “What neighborhood are you in? Empirical Findings of Relationships between Residential Location, Lifestyle, and Travel”, the 2007 ITE Illinois Section Best Paper Award (co-authored with former PhD student Liang Long).

d. “Communication Reduction for Floating Car Data based Traffic Information Systems”, Best paper award at the Second International Conference on Advanced Geographic Information Systems, Applications, and Services, GEOProcessing 2010, St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles, February 10-16, 2010 (co-authored with former PhD student Daniel Ayala and Dr. Ouri Wolfson).

e. "Modeling Commercial Vehicle Daily Tour Chaining", Best paper competition 3rd place at the TRB-SHRP2 Freight Modeling and Data Symposium, Washington DC, September 14-15, 2010 (co-authored with former PhD student Minyan Ruan and Dr. Kazuya Kawamura).

f. “Investigating the use of microhubs and crowdshipping for last mile delivery”, Outstanding Paper Award for Best Presentation at the 11th International Conference on City Logistics, Dubrovnik, Croatia, June 12-14, 2019.

Keynote speaker:

  • “Emerging Trends in Last-mile logistics: Where Do We Go from Here?”, Keynote speech at the Global Commercial Vehicle and Off-Highway Vehicle Summit 2017, Chicago, IL, December 6-8, 2017.

Invited Panelist:

  1. Global Commercial Vehicle and Off-highway Vehicle Summit 2017, Panel on Alternative Fuels Development as a Green Product Trend in USA, Chicago, IL, December 6th, 2017.
  2. Global Commercial Vehicle and Off-highway Vehicle Summit 2017, Panel on Trends for New Energy Commercial Vehicles and How It Impacts the Future of Efficiency and Emissions, Chicago, IL, December 7th, 2017.
  3. 2018 Ethanol Summit of the Asia-Pacific, Panel on the Environmental Benefits Of Blending Ethanol Into Gasoline – Impacts On Air Quality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions In Five Major World Capitals, Minneapolis, MN, May 22, 2018
  4. Chicago Council of Science and Technology (C2ST), Panel on The Future of Transportation, Chicago, IL, April 7th, 2020

Student awards:

Dan Yu: 2006 Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC) Parker Award

Liang Long:

  • 2006 Institute of Transportation Engineers-Illinois Section Best Paper Award
  • 2006 Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE)-Illinois Section Student Scholarship Award
  • 2006 and 2007 Transportation Group Scholarship Award of the Illinois Section of American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)

Wenjing Pu:

  • Best paper award, at the 2008 Transport Chicago Annual Conference
  • 2007 Freeman Fellowship, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
  • 2007 Transportation Group Scholarship, Illinois Section – American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)

Joshua Auld: Best Paper Award, 2nd prize, at the 2007 Transport Chicago Conference

Minyan Ruan:

  • 2009 Transportation Group Scholarship, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
  • 2008 George Krambles Transportation Scholarship
  • 2009 Helene M. Overly Memorial Award, WTS Chicago Chapter

Suriya Vallamsundar:

  • 2011 Transportation Group Scholarship Award of the Illinois Section of American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
  • 2013 UIC Chancellor’s Graduate Research Fellowship

Qin Chen:

  • 2012 UIC Chancellor’s Graduate Research Fellowship
  • 2012 George Krambles Transportation Scholarship

Sudheer Ballare

  • Outstanding Paper Award for Best Presentation at the 11th International Conference on City Logistics, Dubrovnik, Croatia, June 12-14, 2019.
  • 2019 ITE Illinois Section Graduate Student Scholarship.

Senior student capstone design project titled “A Study of the Effects of Autonomous Vehicles on Urban Road Design.”

  • The team of Mahmoud Alsharbini, Abdulaziz Alahmadi, Mohammed Hameed, and Abdul Aziz Shaban won the best prototype award in Spring 2019.

This project focused on the effects of autonomous vehicles (AVs) on roadway design since there are new variables that designers need to consider. The team proposed an idea for intersections without traffic lights and for crosswalks to be pushed back away from the intersection to avoid any conflicts for vehicles and pedestrians. They also proposed to add a reserved lane for AVs on highways.