2025 Global Symposium Speaker Bios

Dr. Rose B. Bellanca is in her fourteenth year leading Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor. With its mission to make a difference in people’s lives through accessible, excellent educational programs and services, WCC enrolls more than 21,000 students annually. The college offers more than 130 programs, both in-person and online, and is the top transfer school to the University of Michigan. Through programs in Transportation Technologies, Cybersecurity, Advanced Manufacturing, Health Sciences and more, WCC educates students to fill workforce needs, preparing them for high-demand, high-skill careers. As part of its efforts to advance mobility and automotive electrification, the college has launched new EV programs and is partnering with the state and industry on semiconductor education. A forward thinker, Dr. Bellanca has led initiatives such as the Advanced Transportation Center and WCC’s collaboration as the only community college in the Center for Connected and Automated Transportation.

Gregg D. Brunner, P.E., is the chief operations officer and chief engineer for the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). Throughout his career, Brunner has presented strong leadership qualities, holding positions as director of the Bureau of Field Services, Blue Water Bridge administrator, Operations associate region engineer, Bay City Transportation Service Center manager, and Bay Region bridge engineer. Prior to coming to MDOT, he worked for private industry as a design engineer. Brunner has been a long-time traffic safety advocate, working alongside industry partners as the co-chair of the Work Zone Safety Task Force and serving as a commissioner on the Governor’s Traffic Safety Advisory Commission. He co-leads the Michigan Liaison Committee for the innovative design and construction of the Gordie Howe International Bridge and represents MDOT on the Council of Future Mobility and Electrification. He is an MDOT Director’s Award recipient and is active with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), also serving as AASHTO’s liaison to the Transportation Association of Canada Chief Engineers’ Panel. Brunner has a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering from Michigan State University and is a licensed professional engineer in the state of Michigan.

Dr. Darcy Bullock earned his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1992. Bullock is the Lyles Family Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue University and serves as the director of the Joint Transportation Research Program (JTRP). Bullock is a Registered Professional Engineer in Indiana and has 30 years of experience in the industry working closely with airports, transportation agencies, the automotive industry, and private sector partners. Bullock is currently leading several projects related to connected and autonomous vehicles and probe vehicle analytics.

Dr. Ying Chen is currently an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University. She received both her Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering and M.S. in Computer Science from Northwestern University. Dr. Chen is interested in developing and applying advanced data science methodologies to address challenges in transportation, aiming to enhance efficiency and sustainability in urban mobility. She is dedicated to advancing our understanding of traveler behavior in the evolving transportation landscape, combining insights from both human and automated perspectives to shape the future of mobility.

Yuxiao Chen is a senior research scientist associated with the autonomous vehicle research group at Nvidia. He is interested in data-driven planning for autonomous systems. Yuxiao got his Bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University in 2013 and his Ph.D. from University of Michigan in 2018. He spent 3 years as a postdoc at Caltech before joining Nvidia in 2021. Yuxiao’s prior works include safety-critical control and planning for systems such as AV, robotics, and power systems. His most recent works include end-to-end autonomous driving with foundation models, data-driven simulation, and application of language models on AV.

Professor Yang Cheng’s research areas include Collaborative Automated Driving Systems (CADS), mobile traffic sensor modeling, work zone operations and safety, and traffic data management and information systems. Dr. Cheng has published more than 90 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and he also has more than ten granted patents about CADS and mobile traffic sensor technologies in the US, China, and Japan. He currently serves as the secretary of the Committee on Connected and Autonomous Mobility of the International Road Federation (IRF). Dr. Cheng has led more than twenty externally funded research projects and served as an active reviewer for more than fifteen journals.

Congresswoman Debbie Dingell represents Michigan’s 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. She is a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Natural Resources Committee, where she leads on critical issues including affordable and accessible health care, clean energy and water, domestic manufacturing and supply chain resilience, and protecting our wildlife and natural resources. Growing up in beautiful Michigan, Dingell, who chairs the Great Lakes Task Force, has always been an advocate for the outdoors and commits her work in Congress to protecting the environment for generations. Dingell is focused on bringing people together – in Congress and in her communities – to support Michigan’s families and the economy. This is most evident in her work to strengthen the American auto industry, maintaining America’s competitiveness and ensuring good-paying American jobs. In 2021, she worked together with the White House, the auto industry, the auto workers, and environmentalists to announce the Biden Administration’s goal of having 50% of new vehicles sold in 2030 be zero-emissions vehicles.

Dr. Yiheng Feng is an assistant professor and assistant director of the Center for Road Safety (CRS) at Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering, Purdue University. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering at the University of Arizona. His research areas include connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) and smart transportation infrastructure, with a focus on cooperative driving automation and transportation system cybersecurity. He has served as PI and Co-PI in many research projects funded by U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE), state DOTs, and industrial companies. His work appeared in a number of top transportation journals and security conferences and is serving as an editor of multiple journals. He is a member of the Traffic Signal Systems Committee (ACP25) at TRB and co-chair of Simulation Subcommittee. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award in 2024 and best paper and dissertation awards from multiple organizations.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, an Oxford-educated economist, is an adjunct professor of economics at George Washington University.  Diana has served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the U.S. Department of Transportation, where she directed the Department’s $1.2 billion research budget, including the University Transportation Center program, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, and the Office of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing. Diana also served as Chief of Staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, and Acting Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Department of Treasury. She is the author or coauthor of six books and hundreds of articles, most recently United States Income, Wealth, Consumption, and Inequality (Oxford University Press, 2021). She is a frequent guest on TV and radio shows and a columnist for the UK’s Daily Telegraph.

Dr. Heye Huang is a Research Associate with the Connected & Autonomous Transportation Systems Lab, University of Wisconsin–Madison. She received her Ph.D. degree in Vehicle Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2023. She was invited as a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Cognitive Robotics, Delft University of Technology, from 2021 to 2022. Her current research interests include connected and automated vehicles, risk assessment, decision-making, and human-centered AI. She has authored over 30 SCI/EI-indexed journal papers, and is a co-holder of over 40 invention patents. Dr. Huang was a recipient of Outstanding Ph.D. Graduate, Outstanding Academic Star, and the National Scholarship at Tsinghua University. She received the Best Paper Award at the International Symposium on Accident Analysis & Prevention (2021), the Journal Cover Paper Award for Engineering (2021), the Best Research Award for Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems (2022), and the Best Paper Award at IEEE DSInS (2023).

Dr. Xiaopeng (Shaw) Li is currently a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and an affiliate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison). He served as the director of National Institute for Congestion Reduction (NICR) before. He is a recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award. He has published over 110 peer-reviewed journal papers. He has served as the PI or a co-PI for a number of federal, state, and industry grants, with a total budget of around $30 million. His major research interests include automation, connectivity, and sensing in transportation and related systems. He received a B.S. degree (2006) in civil engineering with a minor in computer engineering from Tsinghua University, China, an M.S. degree (2007), and a Ph.D. (2011) degree in civil engineering along with an M.S. degree (2010) in applied mathematics from the University of Illinois at Urban- Champaign, USA.

Professor Hani S. Mahmassani specializes in multimodal transportation systems analysis, planning and operations, dynamic network modeling and optimization, transit network planning and design, dynamics of user behavior and telematics, telecommunication-transportation interactions, large-scale human infrastructure systems, and real-time operation of logistics and distribution systems.

On January 20, 2021, Dr. Robert Hampshire was sworn in and performed the duties of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the United States Department of Transportation, and served as the department’s Chief Science Officer, becoming the first to fill the role in over 40 years. In this role he led the $2B research and technology portfolio of USDOT and agenda across all modes of transportation. His office included the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (Cambridge, MA), Transportation Safety Institute (Oklahoma City, OK), Bureau of Transportation Statistics, and the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office, the SMART grant program, University Transportation Centers grant program , Advanced Research Projects Agency for Infrastructure (ARPA-I), Climate Change Center, Office of Position Navigation and Timing (PNT) and Spectrum management, ant the Highly Automated Safe System Center of Excellence (HASS COE). On Jan 21, 2025, Hampshire returned to his faculty position at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. His research applies a blend of public policy, operations research, data science, and systems approaches to analyze novel transportation systems such as smart parking, connected vehicles, autonomous vehicles, ride-hailing, bike sharing, car sharing, as well as, pedestrian and bicyclist safety. His research focuses on environmental impacts, equity, and access to opportunities. His work has been cited widely, and covered by major press outlets. He has worked extensively with both public and private sector partners worldwide. He has also been a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University and a visiting professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hampshire received a PhD in operations research and financial engineering from Princeton University.

Felix Heide is an assistant professor at Princeton University, co-founder of the self-driving vehicle startup Algolux, and head of AI at Torc Robotics. He is researching the theory and application of computational imaging and computer vision systems. Exploring imaging, vision, and display systems end-to-end, Felix’s work lies at the intersection of optics, machine learning, optimization, computer graphics, and computer vision. He received his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. Felix obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Siegen and was a postdoc at Stanford University. His doctoral dissertation won the Alain Fournier Dissertation Award and the SIGGRAPH outstanding doctoral dissertation award. He won the NSF CAREER Award 2021 and the Sony Young Faculty Award 2021. He was named a Packard Fellow in 2022 and a Sloan Research Fellow in 2023. Felix was named SIGGRAPH New Significant Researcher in 2023. He co- founded the autonomous driving startup Algolux, now part of Torc Robotics and Daimler Trucks, building on academic research during his Ph.D. thesis. With over 150 employees and venture capital of more than 30 Million USD, Algolux has shipped computer vision software to more than 1 Million vehicles of European automotive manufacturers. His research is also directly used by Waymo, Cruise, and Google as part of their autonomous vehicle programs.

Darian Hogue is a Software Engineer at Mcity, specializing in simulation and web application technologies for connected and automated vehicle research. He collaborates with researchers and industry professionals on initiatives such as the Mcity Digital Twin and the Smart Intersection Project. His expertise lies in developing digital environments for testing and validating autonomous vehicle systems, as well as creating applications that streamline workflows and enable data-driven decision-making. Currently, he is partnering with NVIDIA to make Mcity’s digital assets “SimReady,” enhancing realism for high-fidelity sensor model integration.

Dr. Morley Mao received their B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. They are a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, Sloan Fellowship, and the IBM Faculty Partnership Award. They have been named the Morris Wellman Faculty Development Professor. Their research interests encompass network systems, mobile and distributed systems, and network/systems security. Their work involves both empirical data collection and analysis, as well as the design and implementation of new systems.

Neda Masoud is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan. She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Industrial Engineering and a Master of Science degree in Physics. She received her Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California Irvine. She is dedicated to developing operational and planning tools that streamline the evolution toward the next generation of mobility systems, which are envisioned to be connected, automated, electrified, and shared, reflecting the forefront of transportation advancements. She is a 2021 NSF CAREER Award recipient and a Cambridge Systematics New Faculty awardee by the Council of University Transportation Centers. She is an Editorial Board Editor for Transportation Research Part B, an Associate Editor for Transportation Science, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Transportation Research Part C.

Ted Morris’s research interests are ITS sensing and vehicle technologies. His previous locally and federally sponsored projects include designing and implementing in-vehicle driver-assist systems; novel field deployable camera sensor systems for security, vehicle, and pedestrian traffic; and software-based educational teaching tools for engineering students and transportation practitioners. Morris has also co-led projects on assessing the impacts of transportation systems in sensitive public lands using in-vehicle GPS probe data and simulation tools, portable urban traffic surveillance systems, and HOV lane enforcement monitoring. He is currently the technical lead and co-Investigator for corridor and region-wide truck parking availability systems, and robotic platform development for pavement quality assurance monitoring. He received a master of science and bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota. Before joining the University of Minnesota, he worked as a research engineer within the Department of Veteran’s Affairs Hines Rehabilitation Research and Development Center and as a senior project engineer for Minnesota Virtual Simulations.

Dr. Alexandra K. Murphy has conducted qualitative and quantitative research on transportation insecurity in the United States. With collaborators, she has developed the Transportation Security Index, the first validated individual-level measure of transportation insecurity. This index is being used to evaluate policies and programs that seek to advance transportation fairness goals. Murphy has also used it in research to investigate the causes and consequences of transportation insecurity and has used it to generate the first prevalence estimates of transportation insecurity in the US. Another line of Murphy’s work draws on interview, ethnographic, and historical methods to investigate the suburbanization of poverty. Dr. Murphy holds a PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Princeton University and a BA in Urban Studies from Barnard College.

Dr. Marco Nie is currently a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University. He received his B.S. in Structural Engineering from Tsinghua University, his M.S. from National University of Singapore and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis. Dr. Nie’s research covers a variety of topics in the areas of transportation systems analysis, transportation economics, and sustainable transportation. Dr. Nie had served as a member of the TRB committees on Transportation Network Modeling and Traffic flow Theory and Characteristics. He is currently an Area Editor for Transportation Science and Networks and Spatial Economics, an Associate for Service Science, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Transportmetrica-B and Transportation Research Part B. Dr. Nie’s research has been supported by National Science Foundation, Transportation Research Board, US Department of Transportation, US Department of Energy, and Illinois Department of Transportation.

Professor Rajesh Rajamani received the B.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India, in 1989, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA, in 1991 and 1993, respectively. He is currently the Benjamin Y. H. Liu-TSI Endowed Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Associate Director of the Minnesota Robotics Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA. He is the author of the popular book titled Vehicle Dynamics and Control (Springer). He has authored or co-authored over 180 journal papers and is a co-inventor on 14 granted patents. His active research interests include estimation, sensing, and control for smart mechanical systems. Dr. Rajamani has served as the Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Automotive Control and is currently a Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

Professor Jeffery Roesler holds the Ernest Barenberg Professorship at University of Illinois and is currently Associate Head and Director of Graduate Studies and Research in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His research has focused on improving and developing structural design tools, characterizing concrete material fracture and fatigue properties under thermo-mechanical loading conditions, and predicting the behavior and capacity of ground-supported concrete slabs through numerical analyses and full-scale assessment. He has developed multiple concrete pavement design and analysis methods for JPCP, CRCP, and bonded concrete overlays especially in light of recycled materials, fiber reinforced concrete, and internal curing with fine lightweight aggregates. He has contributed to analyzing the effects of cool pavements and the microscale urban heat island including thermal and optical properties of construction materials. He has further expanded this work to develop photocatalytic concrete to reduce the impact of urban air emissions on human health.

Dr. Renée St. Louis is an Assistant Research Scientist in the Behavioral Sciences Group at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. She holds a PhD in Public Health from the Monash University Accident Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia. Dr. St. Louis’s research lies at the intersection of psychology and public health, with an overarching goal of deepening our understanding of social and behavioral issues important to enhancing transportation safety, mobility, and equity throughout the lifespan. Dr. St. Louis has managed a variety of projects addressing transportation issues related to older adults and people with disabilities. She has extensive experience in the development and implementation of protocol for conducting both laboratory and field data collection research with participants of varying ages and levels of physical and cognitive ability. Her research interests include program evaluation, psychosocial factors that influence mobility decisions, and the use of automated technologies to extend driver and passenger safety and mobility throughout the lifespan.

Dr. John Scanlon is a Staff Safety Researcher at Waymo, an autonomous driving technology company that aims to make it safe and easy for people and things to get where they’re going. John works on the Severity and Safety Impact team, where he leads multiple projects that estimate the potential for the Waymo technology to improve roadway safety. His work focuses on both the prospective assessment of injury risk and retrospective evaluation of system performance. John is the project leader of ISO/PWI TS 25536 on “Retrospective safety performance assessment for Automated Driving Systems”. He has served as an organizer of the “Safety and Performance of Active Safety and Driving Automation Features” session at the annual SAE WCX meeting since 2018. John completed his BS (Engineering Science and Mechanics), MS (Biomedical Engineering), and Ph.D. work (Biomedical Engineering) at Virginia Tech. His Ph.D. work focused on evaluating the potential safety benefits of vehicle advanced driver assistance systems. Before joining Waymo, John worked in Exponent’s Vehicle Engineering practice, where he managed a wide range of client projects on the topics of crash reconstruction, automotive safety, and vehicle design.

Dr. Katie Skinner is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Robotics at the University of Michigan. She holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. Prior to this appointment, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology. She received an M.S. and Ph.D. from the Robotics Institute at the University of Michigan, and a B.S.E. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University. She is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, and IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters Best Paper Award.

Raphael Stern is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo-Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Prior to joining UMN, Dr. Stern was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Informatics at the Technical University of Munich. Dr. Stern has also spent time as a visiting researcher at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Stern received a bachelor of science degree (2013), master of science degree (2015), and Ph.D. (2018) all in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Greg Stevens joined Mcity as research director in August 2023. Working with other Mcity leaders, he steers the center’s strategic research plan for next-generation mobility, including connectivity, automation, AI, and the role of infrastructure, and he oversees Mcity’s industry partner research program.
Greg works closely with Mcity industry members and assists in recruiting new members as needed. He serves as project manager of industry and government-funded projects directed by Mcity, and collaborates with others within Michigan Engineering to ensure effective development and execution of the research program. One of Greg’s priorities at Mcity is helping to translate innovative research into valuable industry applications. He is uniquely qualified to take on this challenge. Greg joined Mcity following a long career at Ford Motor Co., where he most recently served as chief engineer of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) features. He has over 14 years of experience developing ADAS features spanning automated driving levels from 0 through 4, as defined by SAE.

Ram Vasudevan is an associate professor in the Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Departments at the University of Michigan. He received a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, an MS degree in Electrical Engineering, and a PhD in Electrical Engineering all from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the ONR Young Investigator Award, and the 1938E Award from the University of Michigan. His work has received best paper awards at the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, the ASME Dynamics Systems and Controls Conference, and IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, and has been finalist for best paper at Robotics: Science and Systems.

Matthew R. Walter is an associate professor at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC). His interests revolve around the realization of intelligent, perceptually aware robots that are able to act robustly and effectively in unstructured environments, particularly with and alongside people. His research focuses on machine learning-based solutions that allow robots to learn to understand and interact with the people, places, and objects in their surroundings. Matthew has investigated these areas in the context of various robotic platforms, including autonomous underwater vehicles, self-driving cars, voice-commandable wheelchairs, mobile manipulators, and autonomous cars for (rubber) ducks. Matthew obtained his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where his thesis focused on improving the efficiency of inference for simultaneous localization and mapping.

Katie Washabaugh is NVIDIA’s Product Marketing Manager for Autonomous Vehicle Simulation, focusing on virtual solutions for real-world mobility. A former journalist at publications such as Automotive News and MarketWatch, she joined the NVIDIA team in 2018. Katie holds a B.A. in public policy from the University of Michigan and lives in Detroit.

Dr. Ping Yi’s research is mainly focused on traffic control and safety, sensor and information technologies, and system reliability and statistical data modeling. Prior to joining UA, Ping had worked for the Minnesota DOT as a project manager over sensors testing, adaptive signals, advanced parking, and incident/special event management. In recent years Ping has been actively involved in research concerning safe operation of autonomous vehicles and their interactions in built environment with conventional vehicles.