Dr. Terry Yang is an Associate Professor (Transportation Engineering) in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Clark Faculty Fellow in the James Clark Engineering School at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the Director of the Maryland Transportation Institute (MTI).

Dr. Yang's current research areas include AI/ML for transportation modeling, Quantum Computing, Traffic Operations, Connected Autonomous Vehicles, Traffic Safety, Data Mining, transportation planning, etc. He is the recipient of the prestigious NSF CAREER award in 2021. He has published over 170 peer-reviewed research articles in journals and conferences. He is currently an Editorial Board member of Transportation Research, Part C,  the Managing Editor of ASCE Journal of Urban Planning and Development,  and Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems. He is also the Chair of the ASCE Artificial Intelligence for Transportation Committee. 

Dr. Yaobang Gong is a Research Assistant Professor in Transportation Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD). Over the past years at UMD, he has conducted extensive research on MDOT SHA field staff, co-leading two MDOT SHA sponsored projects – one focused on FMTs and another on CHART responders. In addition, he has co-led more than ten research projects funded by the USDOT, FHWA, DOE, Utah DOT, and Florida DOT, covering topics such as traffic data analytics, survey analysis, traffic safety, road asset management, and transportation systems management.

Dr. Bo Shang is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in M-TRAIL at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research focuses on AI-enabled transportation systems, roadside LiDAR perception, computer vision, multi-object tracking, trajectory analytics, and safety assessment for intelligent transportation applications. His recent work includes developing large-scale LiDAR-based perception pipelines for urban intersections and highways, vehicle and vulnerable road user detection and tracking, near-miss analytics, and AI-driven transportation safety monitoring systems.

Ms. Yi Zhang, Ph.D. Candidate

Education: M.S., Southeast University

Research Area: Data Mining and Privacy Protection, Machine Learning Application in Transportation

Mr. Yuan-Zheng Lei, Ph.D. Candidate

Education: M.S., Southwest Jiaotong University

Research Area: Machine Learning, Optimization, Transportation, Quantum Computing

Mr. Qiwei Zhang, Ph.D. Candidate

Education: M.S., University of Florida

Research Area: Energy Trajectory Modeling and Agentic AI

Ms. Keunmin Cho, Ph.D. Candidate

Education: M.S., Ajou University

Research Area: Transportation Network Resiliency

Mr. Dianwei Chen, Ph.D. Candidate

Education: M.S., Ohio State University

Research Area: Reinforcement Learning, Autonomous Vehicle Control, Large Language Model

Mr. Hsuan-Chih (Leo) Wang,  Ph.D. Candidate

Education: M.B.A., National Cheng Kung University
Research Area: AI for Transportation and Mobility Analytics 

Ms. Yifan Chen, Ph.D. Student

Education: M.S., University of Wisconsin-Madison

Research Area: Traffic Safety

Mr. Jihoon Kim, Ph.D. Student

Education: M.S., Korea Aerospace University

Research Area: AI Agent and Digital Twin for Transportation

Ms. Olivia Curtorillo, Ph.D. Student

Education: B.S., Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Research Area: Human Dynamics and Emergency Evacuation

Ms. Narjes Shayesteh, Ph.D. Student

Education: M.S., University of Maryland, College Park

Research Area: Data Mining and Data Privacy

Mr. Yufan Zhang, Ph.D. Student

Education: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Research Area: Cybersecurity and Physical AI

Mr. Ebrahim Nobakht, Ph.D. Student

Education: University of Colorado Denver

Research Area: TBD

Dr. Kaitai Yang, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: A Hybrid Framework For Modeling Surrounding-Vehicle Behavior For Evaluating Autonomous Vehicle Performance In Risk-Critical Driving Scenarios

1st Employment: RK&K (Transportation Engineer)

Dr. Sayantan Tarafdar, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: Integrated Planning of Residential and Commercial Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure: A Strategic Bi-Level Optimization and Queuing Framework Approach 

1st Employment: iDesign (Transportation Engineer)

Dr. Bahar Azin, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: Integrated Charging Facility Planning and Incentive-Based Demand Management for Electric Vehicles.

1st Employment: Transpo Group (Sr. Data Scientist/Project Manager)

Dr. Qinzheng Wang, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: Adaptive and Multi-Path Progression Traffic Signal Control and Connected Automated Vehicle Trajectory Optimization under Mixed Traffic Environment

1st Employment: Leidos (Transportation Engineer)

Dr. Zhao Zhang, Ph.D.

Dissertation Title: Freeway Traffic Flow Modeling and Forecasting Using Physics-Guided Machine Learning.

* Best Doctoral Dissertation Award by TRB AED50 (AI Committee)

1st Employment: McMaster University (Postdoctoral Fellowship )

Dr. Lei Cheng, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Research Associate at M-TRAIL

1st Employment: University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (Assistant Professor)