The academic staff and student researchers driving our rail and transit work forward.
Dr. Xiang Liu is the Director of the Rutgers Rail and Transit Program and a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Liu's research focuses on artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and automation technologies for improving rail operational safety and efficiency. Dr. Liu has published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals and international conferences. Dr. Liu’s rail & transit research has been supported by a variety of public and private sectors in the United States. Dr. Liu is the Associate Editor for the Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management, and Journal of Smart and Resilient Transportation. Dr. Liu has received four “Best Paper” awards from the Transportation Research Board (TRB), the “Educator of the Year 2017” Award, and the “Researcher of the Year 2018”, both in New Jersey. In 2018, he received a “Rising Star” award from the Progressive Railroading magazine. Dr. Liu currently teaches several railroad courses at Rutgers. He is a Faculty Advisor to Rutgers AREMA Student Chapter. In 2019, he received the Young Alumnus Achievement Award from the Civil and Environmental Engineering Alumni Association at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His students are employed across academia and industry, with placements at institutions such as Universtiy of Huston, Shanghai Jiaotong University, and companies such as Google, Meta, and Amazon.
Contact: xiang.liu[at]rutgers.edu
With advanced machine learning models including large language models (LLMs), our team analyzes large-scale datasets from local and nationwide rail companies to optimize decision-making processes, elevate service quality, and strengthen safety protocols.
Our research explores advanced materials, methodologies and technologies (sensing, automation, communications) to improve the design, operation, maintenance and management of trains and railway vehicles.
Our team contributes to the field by turning big infrastructure condition monitoring data into optimal inspection and maintenance decisions, using data analytical and artificial intelligence approaches.
Our research focuses on designing, developing and testing next generation signaling, control and communications technologies for rail and transit industries.
Our research uses AI, mathematical modeling and risk analyses to understand human factors and crowd movements in rail and transit environment (e.g. in transit stations, near grade crossings).
Research Staff
Asim Zaman is a Ph.D. student in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University. His research addresses utilizing Artificial Intelligence for transportation safety and risk management. Asim received his B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark NJ, 2014 and M.S. in Civil Engineering from Rutgers in 2018. He worked as a senior engineer for the New Jersey Department of Transportation from 2014 – 2021 and now works as a Project Engineer at Rutgers CAIT.
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Ph.D. Student
Zezhou is a Ph.D. student in Civil Engineering and Master’s student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rutgers University. His research focuses on railroad signal and control. He received his B.S. from Beihang University in Electrical and Computer Engineering and M.S. from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign in Civil Engineering.
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Ph.D. Student
Weitian Li is a Ph.D. student in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University. His research focuses on LiDAR analysis and infrastructure monitoring for railroads. He received his MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rutgers University.
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Ph.D. Student
Huixiong is a Ph.D. student in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University. His research focuses on computer vision and software engineering for transportation applications. He received his B.S. in Mathematics from Sichuan University and M.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Rutgers.
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Ph.D. Student
Mulin is a Ph.D. student in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University. His research focuses on rail network modeling. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Beijing Jiaotong University and M.S. in Civil Engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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Master's Student
John is a Master's student in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University. His research applies computer vision to improve rail operations and safety. He received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Manhattan College in 2023.
View Papers →No current undergraduate student researchers listed.
Alumni
Qinyuan completed his B.S. in Computer Science at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, in May 2023. He is currently furthering his education in the M.S.E. Computer Science program at Johns Hopkins University. During his time in the lab, his main contributions were instrumental in the development of train gate detection algorithms and the process of weekly validation.
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Alumni
Shuohao received his B.S. in computer science and B.A. in mathematics from Rutgers University, New Brunswick in May 2023. He is now a master student at University of California, Los Angeles. During his time in the lab, he conducted several research projects including railway suicidal detection and designing database cleaning algorithms for the IGCT database.
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Alumni
Di is a Ph.D. student in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on rail system risk analyses. She received her B.S. from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Air Transportation. She received her M.S. from the University of Virginia and University of Minnesota in Civil Engineering & Industrial Engineering.
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Alumni
Xin completed his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University. Now he holds a position at Tongji University. His research focuses artificial intelligence for rail applications. He received his B.S. and M.S. from Southwest Jiaotong University in Civil Engineering.
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Alumni
Junyan completed his M.S. in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University. His research focuses on Intelligent Transportation Systems and big data analysis for railroads. He received his B.S. in Computer Science from Rutgers University. Junyan is now employed at Google.
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Alumni
Dhiraj received his M.S. in Computer Science from Rutgers. He is now a software engineer at Google. His research focuses artificial and railroad safety. He received his Bachelor of Technology degree from Visvesvaraya National Institute Of Technology, India in Computer Science and Engineering.
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Alumni
Kang completed his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University in December 2019. His research addresses railroad big data analytics.
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Alumni
Zheyong completed his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University in December 2020. He is now an Assistant Professor at University of Houston. His research focuses on operations research, logistics optimization and freight transportation. He received a B.S. and M.S., both in Industrial Engineering, from Tianjin University, China.
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Alumni
Zhipeng completed his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University in May 2020. He is now an Assistant Professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University. His research focuses on transportation safety and risk analysis of railroad engineering. He obtained his B.S. from Beijing Jiaotong University in 2015 and a M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016.
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Alumni
Huiyue was a visiting Ph.D student in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University and is now a Post Doc in China. She received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering at Southwest Jiaotong University in 2014. Her research interests lie in automatic train control, reinforcement learning based optimization and control techniques, robust and adaptive control, rail measurement techniques.
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Alumni
Yuan completed his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University and is now a Post Doc in China. He loves mathematics, algorithm designing and programing. He prefers to solve problems with MATLAB. He is also fond of APP designing for Android and IOS. What's more, he loves java and hates C++. His current research focuses on (1) rail measurement techniques; (2) big data application of track maintenance; (3) intelligent railway system; (4) nonlinear dynamics.
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Alumni
Jieyi completed her Master’s in Civil and Environment Engineering at Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey in 2018. She received her B.S from Central South University in China and developed a professional ability in modeling. As a junior researcher, Jieyi's research interests are mainly focusing on railroad safety analysis and transportation data analysis.
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Alumni
Liwen completed his Master’s in Civil and Environment Engineering at Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey in 2018. He assisted in evaluating RPMs and their alternatives for optimal allocation of safety investment concerning interdependent Crash Modification Factors. He received his B.E. in Civil Engineering from Tongji University, China. Liwen also had a two-year full-time on-site experience in the Evergrande Group in Shanghai, where he worked as a project engineer.
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Alumni
Masoud is a pursuing his M.S. with a research fellowship. His research addresses transportation safety and risk management. He is currently working on a project related to roadway transportation safety. Masoud received his B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Iran, 2015.
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Alumni
Tejashree completed her Master’s in Civil and Environment Engineering at Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey in 2019. She is a junior researcher, assisting in the railway safety analysis and risk assessment using FRA data. She is currently working on Collision and derailment severity analysis. Tejashree received her B.E. degree in Civil Engineering from Osmania University, India.
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Alumni
Christian is a M.S. student in City and Regional Planning at Rutgers University. He has worked on a methodological framework for truck parking development. His current research focuses on railroad infrastructure risk management and safety policy. He has a B.S. in Urban Planning from Cornell University where he additionally conducted rural public transit planning and policy analysis with a local metropolitan planning organization.
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