AI Agent for Rail Transportation
With advanced machine learning models, our team analyzes large-scale datasets from local and nationwide rail companies to optimize decision-making processes, elevate service quality, and strengthen safety protocols.
Meet Our Research Team
The academic staff and student researchers driving our rail and transit work forward.
Lab Director
Dr. Xiang Liu
Lab Director & ProfessorDr. 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
Research Interests
Smart Train and Vehicle Technologies
Our research explores advanced materials, methodologies, and technologies to improve design, operation, maintenance and management railway vehicles.
AI for Infrastructure Management
Our team transforms big infrastructure condition monitoring data into optimal inspection and maintenance decisions, using data analytics and artificial intelligence approaches.
Next Generation Train Control and Communications Technologies
Our research focuses on designing, developing, and testing next generation signaling, control and communications technologies for rail and transit industries.
Human Factors In Rail and Transit
Our research uses AI, mathematical modeling, and risk analyses to understand human factors and crowd movements in rail and transit environment.
Awards
- Outstanding Paper Award, Hazardous Materials Transportation Committee (AT040) of Transportation Research Board, 2023
- Young Alumnus Achievement Award, Civil and Environmental Engineering Alumni Association, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2020
- Researcher of the Year Award, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Central New Jersey Section, 2018
- Walter Tyson Assistant Professorship Award, Rutgers School of Engineering, 2018
- Rising Star Award, Progressive Railroading Magazine, 2018
- Outstanding Paper Award, Hazardous Materials Transportation Committee (AT040) of Transportation Research Board, 2018
- Educator of the Year Award, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) New Jersey Section, 2017
- Best Paper Award for Young Member, Railroad Operational Safety Committee (AR070) of Transportation Research Board, 2017
- Outstanding Paper Award, Hazardous Materials Transportation Committee (AT040) of Transportation Research Board, 2017
- Outstanding Research Contribution Award, Hazardous Materials Transportation Committee (AT040) of Transportation Research Board, 2016
- Best Paper Award for Young Member, Railroad Operational Safety Committee (AR070) of Transportation Research Board, 2015
- Risk, Law & Policy Merit Award, International Society for Risk Analysis, 2013
- USDOT Dwight Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship, 2012
Research Staff
Asim Zaman
Project Engineer
Asim Zaman is a project engineer at Rutgers Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation (CAIT). His research focuses on development of Artificial Intelligence solutions for railroad applications. Asim previously worked for New Jersey Department of Transportation as a Senior Engineer, holds a Professional Engineering License in New Jersey, and has over 10 years of experience in transportation engineering and project management.
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Zhe Huang
Research Application Designer
Zhe Huang is a research application designer at Rutgers Rail and Transit Lab at CAIT. He translates cutting-edge railway research into impactful software and practical solutions. Partnering with major passenger and freight railroad companies and agencies, he builds tools that modernize rail operations and address real-world rail challenges.
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Alexander Warden
Assistant Project Manager
Alexander Warden is an assistant project manager at the Rutgers Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation (CAIT), specializing in GIS-based transit analysis. He received his B.A. in Geography from Rutgers University, with a concentration in Geospatial Analysis. To further his knowledge of the transportation field, he is pursuing an online M.S. in Transportation Management at San Jose State University. Previous work has included resiliency and flood mitigation planning as an intern at CAIT, using life cycle cost analysis and comparative cost-benefit analysis, informed by GIS data layers, for the Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA) and the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT).
Graduate Student Researchers
Zezhou Wang
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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Weitian Li
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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Huixiong Qin
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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Mulin Wan
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.
John Ng
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.
Sonali Jepal
Master's Student
Sonali is a Master's student in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University. Her work and research focus on grade crossing safety, rail network modeling, and railroad infrastructure monitoring. She has a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Rutgers University and is interested in the intersection of transportation systems, technology, and safety.
Undergraduate Student Researchers
No current undergraduate student researchers listed.
Alumni
Qinyuan Liu
M.S.E. in Computer Science
Qinyuan completed his B.S. in Computer Science at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, in May 2023 and completed his M.S.E. in the 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.
Shuohao Ping
Ph.D Student in Computer and Information Science
Shuohao received his B.S. in computer science and B.A. in mathematics from Rutgers University, New Brunswick in May 2023. He recieved his Master's degree in Quantum Science and Technology from University of California, Los Angeles. He is a Ph.D. student in Computer and Information Science at University of Pennsylvania. During his time in the lab, he conducted several research projects including railway suicidal detection and designing database cleaning algorithms for the IGCT database.
Di Kang
Ph.D. in Civil Engineering
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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Xin Wang
Ph.D. in Civil Engineering
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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Junyan Dai
Master's in Civil Engineering
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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Dhiraj Deelip Gandhi
Master's in Computer Science
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.
Zheyong Bian
Ph.D. in Civil Engineering
Zheyong completed his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University in December 2020. He is now an Associate 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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Zhipeng Zhang
Ph.D. in Civil Engineering
Zhipeng completed his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Rutgers University in May 2020. He is now an Associate 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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Huiyue Tang
Ph.D. in Civil Engineering
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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Yuan Wang
Ph.D. in Civil Engineering
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 programming. 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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Kang Zhou
Ph.D. in Civil Engineering
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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Tejashree Turla
Master's in Civil Engineering
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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Jieyi Deng
Master's in Civil Engineering
Jieyi completed her Master’s in Civil and Environmental 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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Liwen Tian
Master's in Civil Engineering
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.
Masoud Imaniboossejin
Master's in Civil Engineering
Masoud completed his Master's in Civil Engineering in 2017. 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.
Christian Higgins
Master's in Transportation Planning
Christian completed his Master's degree in Transportation Planning at Rutgers University in 2017. 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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