Congratulations to UC Berkeley Civil and Environmental Engineering PhD candidates Zhe Fu and Yi Ju, who each received 2025 CTF Lipman Family Sustainable Transportation Graduate Fellowships. They were presented with the award at the California Transportation Foundation Transportation Forum on Tuesday Feb. 19, 2026.
“I’m truly honored to receive the CTF Lipman Family Sustainable Transportation Graduate Fellowship. My research focuses on data-informed learning and control strategies to reduce congestion and emissions in traffic systems. This fellowship is a great recognition for my research, and it will allow me to continue developing practical and equitable solutions that advance sustainable transportation,” says Fu.
“The CTF Lipman Family Sustainable Transportation Graduate Fellowship will support my PhD research at UC Berkeley in the transportation–energy nexus, advancing affordable, equitable, and scalable solutions for coordinated EV charging in California and beyond,” says Ju.
The Lipman Family Foundation provided five PhD students with a $10,000 scholarship award/fellowship to support their studies and research in sustainable transportation — recognizing the essential role that emerging scholars play in shaping California’s sustainable transportation future.
Fu and Ju were chosen for their demonstrated commitment to sustainable transportation, as well as the novelty, caliber, impact, and feasibility of their research proposal. Academic performance and transcripts, as well as the student's references, also were considered.
Zhe Fu is a final-year Ph.D. candidate in Transportation Engineering and M.S. candidate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) at UC Berkeley, advised by Professor Alexandre Bayen at Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Lab. Her research focuses on learning, control, and modeling for distributed parameter systems, with an emphasis on mixed autonomy. She develops physics-informed neural models of hyperbolic PDEs, designs both model-based and data-driven control algorithms, and validates them through large-scale field experiments. Zhe has been recognized as a 2025 Eno Fellow and was the Runner-up in the 2025 Berkeley Grad Slam. Her research has received honors across communities, including First Place in the INFORMS Poster Competition (2023) and Rising Stars awards in Mechanical Engineering (2024 by CMU), EECS (2025 by MIT), and CPS (2025 by NSF). Her leadership, mentorship, and teaching efforts have been recognized by UC Berkeley and organizations such as ITS, CTF, WTS, EDGE in Tech, H2H8 and AAa/e. Learn more at https://fu-zhe.com/
Yi Ju is a PhD candidate in Systems Engineering at UC Berkeley, advised by Professor Scott Moura, in addition to an MS candidate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His research interests broadly lie in sustainable and intelligent energy systems, with applications in buildings, microgrids, transportation and other societal systems. His recent work focuses on electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure, from both technical (controls) and social (incentives, equity) perspectives. Prior to coming to Berkeley in 2021, he received his bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University. He also works closely with CEE/DCRP Professor Marta Gonzalez, among many other extraordinary researchers around the globe.
