Director

PictureClick above headshot for accessing Dr. Yu Zhang's CV (PDF file).
Dr. Yu Yu Zhang is a Professor with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida (USF) and leads the Smart Urban Mobility Laboratory (SUM-Lab) at USF. She serves as the Director for National Institute for Congestion Reduction (NICR), a USDOT National University Transportation Center (8/2022-8/2025). She also served as the Associate Director of Center for Transportation, Environmental, and Community Health (CTECH), a USDOT Tier 1 UTC (10/2016-9/2023). Dr. Zhang develops mathematical programming and solution algorithms, simulation tools, econometrics and statistical models, machine learning/deep learning methods for obtaining innovative solutions for more efficient, resilient, and sustainable multimodal transportation systems. Her recent efforts focus on challenging issues of emerging services and technologies in transportation, including Advanced Air Mobility and automated connected electrified and shared (ACES) Transportation.   
 
Dr. Zhang is the recipient of 2020 Amazon Research Award, a prestigious research award supporting innovations at academic institutions and non-profit organizations worldwide and 2010 Fred Burggraf Award, which is conferred by the National Academies of Science Transportation Research Board for recognizing the excellence of young researchers. She has published more than 80 papers in top transportation journals such as Transportation Research Part B, Part C, Part D, and Part E (by Dec. 2024, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1202-626X). 

Dr. Zhang serves on the editorial board of Journal of Public Transportation, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation, and Journal of Air Transport Management. She served as Associate Editor for Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment and Multimodal Transportation published by Elsevier (1/2021-1/2024) and on the editorial board of Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies.
 
Dr. Zhang served as the Chair for Transportation Research Board (TRB) Airfield and Airspace Performance (AV060) committee (4/2017-4/2023), the President for Chinese Overseas Transportation Association (COTA) (1/2016-1/2018), and the President of Women in Transportation Seminar (WTS) Tampa Bay Chapter (1/ 2020-1/2024). 

Dr. Zhang holds Ph.D. and M.S. from the University of California Berkeley in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Bachelor from Southeast University of China in Transportation Engineering.

Associate Director

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​Joseph Post has over 35 years of experience in aerospace, defense, and civil aviation.
Mr. Post has held various leadership positions at the Federal Aviation Administration, most recently as Acting Director of Systems Engineering. He has worked at Sikorsky Aircraft, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), Princeton Consultants, TRW, and The CNA Corporation. Immediately before joining FAA, Mr. Post was the military space analyst in the National Security Division of the Congressional Budget Office.

​Mr. Post earned a bachelor’s degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from M.I.T., a master’s degree in Engineering and Applied Science from Yale University, and a master’s degree in Economics from George Mason University. Mr. Post is a co-inventor of three patents relating to helicopter flight controls, and holds FAA commercial pilot and remote pilot certificates.

Assistant Director

Dr. Can Cui got her Ph.D degree in Water Conservancy and Environment at Zhengzhou University (China) in 2021 and B.E. degree in Water Conservancy and Environment at Zhengzhou University (China) in 2014. Dr. Cui focuses on the research of new mobility, e.g., car sharing, ridesourcing, shared micromobility, and emerging shared automated vehicles.  

Research Areas:

Advanced Aerial Mobility/Urban Air Mobility:
Network Design and Demand Estimation; Airspace Management of Integrated National Airspace System; Automated Air Traffic Management System; Community Integration, equity, and sustainability; Multimodal Connections with Emerging Technologies and Business Models.
 
*"Advanced aerial mobility involves the emergence of transformative and disruptive new airborne technology supporting an ecosystem designed to transport people and things to locations not traditionally served by current mode of air transportation, including both rural and the more challenging and complex urban environment."  --Advancing Aerial Mobility: A National Blueprint

Shared Micromobility, Ridesourcing, and Shared Automated Vehicles: Efficient and Equitable Micromobility Program Design and Evaluation; Impact Analysis of Shared AV; Multimodal Connections with Emerging Technologies and Business Models; Learning-based prediction of demand of different modes.

*Micromobility: namely docked and dockless sharing programs with bike, electric bikes and electric scooters.  

​Air Transportation: Applications of Machine Learning in Air Traffic Management; Air Traffic Flow Management; Air Transport Economics; Integrated Airspace with New Entrants; Green Aviation.  

Transportation Resilience: Criticality Analysis of Roadway Network and Freight Transportation System; Integrated Mitigation and Restoration Planning for Transportation and Freight Movement; Resiliency of Interdependent Critical Infrastructures  

Key words of research interests/areas:

Transportation network modeling; Air transportation; Air traffic management, Applications of machine learning in transportation; Transportation resilience; Advanced air mobility (AAM)/Urban air mobility (UAM); Emerging technologies and business models in transportation.
Dr. Yu Zhang's Honors and Awards
  1. Inducted to 2025 National Academy of Inventor Senior Member, 2/6/2025. 
  2. Best Paper Award, Transportation Research Board Standing Committee of Intelligent Transportation System, “DARTS: Drone-Based AI-Powered Real-Time Traffic Incident Detection System”, 10/31/2024, presented during 2025 TRB Annual Meeting.   
  3. TRB 2023 Blue Ribbon Committee for Identifying and Advancing Ideas for Research, Chair of Airfield and Airspace Performance Committee.  
  4. Amazon Research Awards (2021), https://www.amazon.science/research-awards/program-updates/2020-amazon-research-awards-recipients-announced. 
  5. Best Paper Award for the airline operations, quality of service and marketing track in 5th International Conference on Research in Air Transportation (ICRAT 2012).
  6. 2010 Fred Burggraf Award, Aviation, for excellence in transportation research by researchers 35 years of age or younger, presented by Transportation Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies of Science
  7. Robert Horonjeff Memorial Grant (2007)
  8. Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad (2006)
  9. UCTC Dissertation Grant (2006-2007)
  10. UCTC fellowship (2005-2006)
  11. Graduate Scholarship, UC Berkeley (2003-2004)
  12. Departmental Block Grant Fellowship, UC Berkeley (2002-2003)
  13. James H. Kell Student Competition Award, Institute of Transportation Engineer (2003)
  14. Best paper of Nanjing Transportation Bureau, China, (1999)
  15. Employee of the year, Nanjing Highway Administration, China (1998)
  16. Honored Graduate, Southeast University, China (1997)
  17. Undergraduate Fellowship, Southeast University, China (1993-1997)