ITS Irvine Symposium on Emerging Research in Transportation 2026

Bio: Dr. Elisa Borowski is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Irvine and member of the university’s Institute of Transportation Studies. Professor Borowski’s research focuses on resource access and resilience to extreme events, with approaches including mixed methods and community-based participatory research. Within the Transportation Research Board, Professor Borowski is a member of the Standing Committee on Implications of Transportation Choices and Access on Public Health. She received her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Northwestern University with an emphasis in transportation systems analysis and planning, as well as a Master of Science in Civil Engineering with a focus on structures and materials and a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology with a second major in English from the University of New Mexico.

Statement: ISERT is an opportunity for academia, industry, and government to bring diverse perspectives to the table, exchange knowledge, and work together to address the most pressing transportation challenges of our time.

Bio: Matt Dean is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a faculty affiliate of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He received the B.S. degree from the University of Virginia and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Texas at Austin in 2019, 2020, and 2023, respectively, all in civil engineering. He serves on the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Transportation and Development Institute (T&DI) Committees on Mobility On Demand and as a Service (MODaaS) and Sustainable Transportation. His research interests include large-scale agent-based travel demand modeling, optimization and simulation, and econometrics for electrified vehicles and distributed energy resources.

Bio: Alan Jenn is an associate professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at the University of California Davis. He is also an active researcher with the Institute of Transportation Studies as part of both the Electric Vehicle Research Center and the Energy Futures Center. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a PhD in the department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP). Dr. Alan Jenn’s research at the University of California, Davis, primarily focuses on the intersection of energy and transportation, with a special emphasis on electric vehicles (EVs) and their integration with the energy grid. His work critically evaluates the lifecycle emissions of EVs, considering factors like electricity generation and vehicle usage patterns. A significant portion of his research is dedicated to the strategic deployment of EV charging infrastructure, addressing challenges in urban planning and grid capacity. Additionally, Dr. Jenn explores the potential of hydrogen as an energy carrier for future transportation systems, examining the economics and logistics of hydrogen supply chains. His contributions also extend to innovations in transportation finance and the role of EVs in new mobility services. Dr. Jenn’s interdisciplinary approach, combining engineering, policy, and economics, has been instrumental in shaping sustainable transportation strategies and informing policy discussions.

Statement: ISERT represents an important space for thoughtful, evidence-based dialogue at the intersection of energy, transportation, and sustainability, bringing together researchers and practitioners to share their research.

Bio: Dr. Yiqiao Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at The City College of New York and in the Computer Science Program at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Irvine. Her research lies at the intersection of AI, multimodal sensing, and transportation systems, with a focus on developing data-driven methods for traffic monitoring, freight activity analysis, and urban safety assessment. Dr. Li’s work integrates advanced sensing technologies with deep learning and vision-language models to enable scalable and cost-effective transportation data solutions. She has led projects on urban truck characterization, human–machine perception for urban mobility, and safety-critical perception for complex urban environments, supported by the U.S. DOT and other agencies. Her recent research explores foundation models and agentic AI for traffic safety analysis and infrastructure-aware autonomous systems. Dr. Li is a member of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Freight Data Standing Committee and actively contributes to freight data and intelligent transportation systems.

Statement: As a UCI alum, ISERT is especially meaningful to me because it is hosted by my home institution and I attended the first ISERT while I was a Ph.D. student at UCI. Its themes including AI in transportation, multimodal mobility, and connected/autonomous mobility system closely align with my research, making ISERT a special professional connection for me.

Bio: Dr. Suman Kumar Mitra is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He received his PhD in Transportation Science from the University of California, Irvine. His primary research interests include travel behavior analysis of vulnerable road users, emerging transportation technologies, travel demand modeling, and transportation safety. Through his research group, Dr. Mitra leads initiatives to develop community-driven, technology-enabled transportation solutions that enhance mobility for individuals with limited access to reliable transportation. His work has benefited low-income communities, older adults, rural residents, and carless households by improving access to essential services such as education, healthcare, and employment. Dr. Mitra’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Arkansas Department of Transportation, the Federal Transit Administration, the Urban Institute, and the California Air Resources Board. He also serves as a member of the Transportation Research Board’s Standing Committee on Mobility of Older Adults and People with Disabilities, contributing to national research and policy discussions on inclusive and equitable transportation systems.

Statement: ISERT represents an invaluable forum for emerging transportation researchers and practitioners to exchange bold ideas, foster interdisciplinary dialogue, and collaboratively push the boundaries of how we understand and solve complex mobility challenges.

Bio: Daisik Danny Nam is an Assistant Professor in the Asia-Pacific School of Logistics at Inha University and an affiliate of the Inha AI Convergence Center. He previously served as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), where he also earned his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering. Currently, Dr. Nam’s research concentrates on applying smart mobility technologies to the logistics sector, with a special emphasis on network design, artificial intelligence and data-driven optimization. His work critically redesigns urban logistics systems, ranging from envy-free parcel delivery network optimization to robots and drones applications for last-mile deliveries. A significant portion of his research is dedicated to smart mobility services, addressing challenges in peer-to-peer ridesharing, autonomous vehicle integration, and eco-driving algorithms. Additionally, Dr. Nam explores the behavioral aspects of transportation and logistics, specifically modeling fairness and user incentives using agent envy for supply allocations. His interdisciplinary background, including industry experience at Kakao and policy research at The Seoul Institute, allows him to bridge the gap between advanced theoretical modeling and practical urban planning strategies.

Statement: ISERT is a meaningful homecoming to the academic foundation that guided my academic path, offering a unique opportunity to engage in high-quality research dialogue with the supportive network that has always been there.

Bio: Pengyuan (Kevin) Sun is a research assistant professor with the University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute’s Transportation Convergent Research Initiative. His research focuses on transportation system engineering and analysis, particularly with connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) for advanced traffic intersection and network informatics. He is interested in vehicle control approaches and designing eco-driving algorithms, with the aim of reducing energy consumption and travel delays. He is currently working on crash risk analysis through surrogate safety measures. Sun has contributed to several peer-reviewed journal and conference papers on eco-driving algorithms and CAV control methods and has participated in research projects related to traffic data analysis, vehicle behavior optimization, and transportation network simulations. He also serves as a reviewer for journals and conferences, such as IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Transportation Research Record, the Scientific Report, and the International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology. Sun received his Ph.D. in transportation system engineering from the Institute of Transportation Studies at University of California, Irvine in 2024.

Statement: ISERT represents where my journey in transportation research began as a community that shapes innovations in intelligent transportation systems. It’s where foundational ideas meet emerging technologies through extensive collaborations towards next-generation transportation research.

Bio: Behram Wali is an assistant professor of transportation at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at UC San Diego. He previously served as associate project scientist at UC San Diego, lead research scientist at Urban Design 4 Health, and postdoctoral scholar at MIT. Dr. Wali earned a PhD in transportation engineering and an MS in econometrics from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His interdisciplinary research examines how the integration of socio-physical systems (e.g., built environment) and cyber-physical systems (e.g., automated vehicles) shapes attitudes and behaviors, with implications for urban health, smart mobility, and safety. Methodologically, his research develops advanced behavioral frameworks to capture random, systematic, and spatial heterogeneity in infrastructural impacts on human behavior. Dr. Wali’s doctoral and subsequent research has been funded by NSF, NIH, U.S. DOT, Strategic Highway Research Program, and EPA, and referenced by organizations such as World Economic Forum, World Health Organization, National Geographic, Federal Highway Administration, and the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec. He received the Distinguished Scientific Papers – Americas award from the ITS World Congress and the Outstanding Paper Award from the TRB of the U.S. National Academies. Dr. Wali serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Safety Research and is a member of the TRB Standing Committee on Transportation Choices and Public Health. He currently leads a study on the built and social environment’s impacts on health and infectious diseases, funded by the California Department of Public Health.

Statement: To me, ISERT represents a critical platform for cross-sector discourse among students, academics, and industry professionals on how the evolving relationship between cyber-physical and socio-physical systems (e.g., land use and the built environment) could shape our urban future.

Bio: Manxi Wu is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include game theory, multi-agent learning, and market design with applications in urban systems. Previously, she was an assistant professor in the school of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell University. Manxi received the B.S. degree in applied mathematics from Peking University in 2015, and the Ph.D. degree in Social and Engineering Systems from MIT in 2021.

Statement: ISERT represents an essential collaborative platform for exploring the frontiers of transportation science. I value it as a space where interdisciplinary approaches converge to solve the most pressing challenges in our field. 

Bio: Dr. Jiangbo Yu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His research focuses on human–AI collaborative transportation planning and management. Together with his students and collaborators, he is actively developing and deploying AI agents to support travel demand forecasting, infrastructure asset management, and mobility service operations. Prior to joining McGill University, Dr. Yu worked as a transportation planner and engineer at Fehr & Peers, Cambridge Systematics, and AECOM, where he supported public agencies at the local, regional, state, and federal levels, as well as private-sector clients. He earned his PhD from UC Irvine under the supervision of Prof. R. Jayakrishnan, and conducted postdoctoral research under the supervision of Prof. Michael F. Hyland. Dr. Yu is a registered Professional Engineer (PE) in the State of Colorado and a licensed Professional Transportation Planner (PTP).

Statement: As an UCI Alum (Anteater), ISERT feels like a wonderful homecoming. It provides a relaxing yet vibrant platform for innovation and connection right in the heart of beautiful Southern California. It offers a unique space to exchange fresh ideas, reconnect with esteemed colleagues, and expand professional networks.