PATH’s Zhang Appointed IEEE Fellow

September 14, 2017

Submitted by admin on Thu, 2014-12-04 09:56

Joining an elite group of engineers, California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology (PATH) Research Engineer and Program Manager Wei-Bin Zhang has been elevated to Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow. Less than 0.1 percent of IEEE voting members are selected annually for this member grade elevation.

“This is actually a recognition of the achievements that PATH and my colleagues have made together,” says Zhang.”I am very fortunate to be involved with the PATH program from its start and am truly appreciative the opportunities that PATH offers.”

UC Berkeley Civil Engineering Professor Emeritus Pravin Varaiya nominated Zhang for the honor for his contribution to cooperative highway automation systems and in recognition of his scientific leadership on numerous projects at PATH throughout the years.

“Wei-Bin is one of the most productive, devoted and creative researchers at PATH. He has made important technical contributions in many areas of intelligent vehicles and highway systems, including automated vehicles, intelligent transit systems and advanced traffic management systems,” says, PATH co-director Roberto Horrowitz. “As an example, during the initial stages of PATH’s celebrated Automated Highway System project, Wei-Bin came up with the important idea of using magnets buried in the pavement, as a means of sensing the lateral motion of automated vehicles relative to the center of the lane. Together with his colleagues at PATH, he developed and implemented sensing and control systems for accurately controlling the lateral motion of automated vehicles. Some of these control systems are still being used in transit systems with automated steering.”

Zhang joined the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Berkeley in 1987 and participated in the early founding of the California PATH Program. Since then, he has become a national leader in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) research, including Advanced Vehicle Control and Safety Systems (AVCSS) technologies and development of the magnetic guidance system concept later adopted for various applications worldwide.

He served as the Technical Director of National Automated Highway Systems Consortium (NAHSC), led by the U.S. Department of Transportation and General Motors in 1994-95. He also managed the ‘platoon’ demonstration preparation for a U.S. Congress-mandated national technical feasibility demonstration of Automated Highway Systems in 1997.

Since 1997, Zhang has worked with California Department of Transportation, U.S. DOT and local agencies to establish various research and deployment programs at PATH and led the efforts to transform PATH from a Caltrans-focused research program to an entrepreneurial multi-faceted applied research and development organization, obtaining and delivering many internationally-renowned ITS research projects.

Wei-Bin has published over two hundred papers and reports. He served on various technical and program committees for TRB, ITS America and APTA. He is currently a member of Board of Governor and the Vice President for Conference of IEEE ITS Society.