About Me

Dr. Wei (David) Fan is a Full Professor and Transportation Area Coordinator in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte). He also serves as a Distinguished Scholar in the William States Lee College of Engineering (LCoEN). Dr. Fan is the Director of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s University Transportation Center for Advanced Multimodal Mobility Solutions and Education (CAMMSE), which is housed within the CEE Department at UNC Charlotte. In addition, he is a Thrust Leader and Associate Director of the NC Transportation Center of Excellence on Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Technology (NC-CAV), and the Founding Director of the Smart, Safe, and Sustainable (S3) Transportation Lab. Dr. Fan earned his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (Transportation) from the University of Texas at Austin (Hook ’em Horns!) in May 2004. From 2004 to 2006, he worked as a Senior Analytical Optimization Software Developer in the R&D Department at SAS Institute Inc. in Cary, North Carolina. Before joining UNC Charlotte, he served as an Assistant and later Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Texas at Tyler from 2006 to 2013. 

Dr. Wei (David) Fan’s primary research interests span a broad range of transportation topics, including sustainable transportation and resilient infrastructure systems (optimization and simulation); big data analytics (machine learning, artificial intelligence, travel demand analysis, transportation safety data, and discrete choice modeling); connected, autonomous, and electric vehicles (technology development, impact analysis, simulation and modeling, optimization, and control); shared mobility and multimodal transportation systems (carsharing, bikesharing, public transit, and non-motorized modes such as bicycling and walking); traffic operations and control (traffic simulation, active traffic management, variable speed limits, and managed lanes); and transportation system analysis and network modeling (traffic assignment, network design, freeway improvements, travel time reliability, bottleneck mitigation, and congestion pricing). His expertise also includes operations research (optimization and statistics) and transportation-related software development. Dr. Fan serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology and holds associate editor roles with the ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, and Transportation Planning and Technology. He is also a handling editor for Transportation Research Record (TRR) and sits on the editorial boards of several other transportation journals. In addition to his editorial responsibilities, Dr. Fan contributes actively to the research community through service on review panels for the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), and Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP). He is a member of three American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) committees and three Transportation Research Board (TRB) committees, and serves as Vice-Chair of the Cross-Cutting Division of the World Transport Convention. He is also a frequent ad hoc reviewer for over 20 leading journals and participated in the review of the 2010 edition of the national Highway Capacity Manual (HCM). In recognition of his scholarly impact, Dr. Fan was ranked among the top 2% of the most-cited scientists worldwide in September 2024 in both the “Single Year 2023” and “Career” categories, within the fields of “Economics and Business” (Logistics and Transportation) and “Civil Engineering.” His honors include the Best Area Editor Award (Autonomous Vehicles and Intelligent Infrastructure) at the 19th COTA International Conference of Transportation Professionals (CICTP2019) in Nanjing, China, the Excellent Paper Award from the 2018 World Transport Convention in Beijing, and a nomination for the UNC Charlotte College of Engineering Graduate Teaching Award in 2016. Earlier in his career, he received the University Research Award at the University of Texas at Tyler in 2012 and was named Best Civil Engineering Professor by students in 2007. He was also honored as an ASCE ExCEEd (Excellence in Civil Engineering Education) Teaching Fellow in 2007.

Dr. Fan has been actively involved in numerous sponsored research projects, with total funding exceeding $17.35 million. He has served as Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator on a wide range of studies funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), SHRP2 Education Connection, Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), and North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT). To date, Dr. Fan has authored 145 peer-reviewed journal articles, in addition to numerous conference proceedings and technical reports. His publications cover topics such as sustainable transportation and resilient infrastructure systems, big data analytics in transportation, connected, autonomous, and electric vehicles, shared mobility and multimodal systems, traffic operations and control, and transportation network modeling and analysis. He is also a licensed Professional Engineer in the state of Texas.