PI spotlight: Yanfeng Ouyang

Yanfeng Ouyang, associate professor and Paul F. Kent Endowed Faculty Scholar in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has served as the principal investigator (or co-principal investigator) of nine ICT projects. He is currently the principal investigator of R27-117: National State Safety Engineers and Traffic Engineers Peer to Peer Workshop, which aims to convene a forum for safety and traffic researchers and decision makers across the nation to discuss the implementation of a variety of safety engineering and traffic operations countermeasures and initiatives, including issues with implementation of new federal rules.

Ouyang has been on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 2005. He has contributed to various IDOT initiatives and efforts such as the development of safety performance functions for Illinois roadways, regional data archiving and management for northeastern Illinois. In a broader sense, his research develops strategic, tactical, and operational models for problems that arise in the context of systems operations, design, and planning, so as to improve stability, efficiency, sustainability, safety, and resiliency of complex transportation systems. In addition to IDOT/ICT, his efforts have beensupported by a diverse portfolio of sponsors such as the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the US DOT, IDOT, Lake County, and the private sector (e.g., CSX Transportation and the ADM Company).

Ouyang currently serves on the editorial advisory board of Transportation Research Part Band the ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems, and he has reviewed research papers for over 40 academic journals. Starting January 2013, he will serve as an associate editor of the international journal Transportmetrica B: Transport Dynamics. He possesses an active membership with the Institute of Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS) and the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies. He is now the chair of the TRB’s Subcommittee on Transit, Freight and Logistics (ADB30(1)), the chair of INFORMS’ Special Interest Group on Freight Logistics and Transportation, and a member of TRB’s Network Modeling Committee (ADB30). Ouyang received the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2008 and the Xerox Faculty Research Award from the University of Illinois in 2010.

Ouyang holds a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 2005. In addition, he holds a master’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Washington in 2001 and another master’s degree in industrial engineering and operations research from the University of California at Berkeley in 2005.