Civil and Environmental Engineering Ph.D. student Yirong Zhou was recently awarded a scholarship from the Institute of Transportation Engineers. Winners of the $500 scholarships are selected based on outstanding scholarship, work experience, and activity within their student section of ITE.

Zhou’s research focuses on data-driven transportation engineering, including operation research, optimization, machine learning, and spatio-temporal analysis and simulation.

His Ph.D. advisor has been CvEEN associate professor Dr. Xiaoyue Cathy Liu. Like Zhou, Dr. Liu’s research interests lie in sustainable transportation, in which she has extensive research and service.

Zhou is an exemplary CvEEN graduate student. He’s been involved in several projects sponsored by National Science Foundation,  Strategic Highway Research Program 2 (SHRP 2), National Institute for Transportation and Communities, and Mountain-Plains Consortium.

CvEEN’s transportation engineering program places an emphasis on the applications of state-of-art advancements concerning planning, design, operations, maintenance, and assessment of transportation systems. Students conduct research in the area of the transportation system design and modeling, address contemporary issues such as shared mobility, vehicle electrification and automation, and develop excellent problem-solving skill sets.