Bo Zou

Job title: 
Associate Professor
Department: 
Alumni
University of Illinois at Chicago
Bio/CV: 

Dissertation: Flight Delays, Capacity Investment and Welfare under Air Transport System Equilibrium

Advisor: Mark Hanson

PhD Transportation Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, 2012

MS Transportation Planning and Management, Tsinghua University, 2007

Diplôme d’Ingénieur, General Engineering, Ecole Centrale de Nantes, 2007

BE Civil Engineering, Tsinghua University, 2005

University of Illinois at Chicago - Present

  • Associate Professor, Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering

The main goal of my research is to create new knowledge and advance the scientific frontiers — on both theoretical and empirical fronts — on transportation and related infrastructure systems performance. To achieve this goal, I conduct trans-disciplinary research by developing new and adapting existing methodologies and modeling tools with roots in an array of foundational fields such as civil systems, operations research, machine learning and AI, microeconomics, and statistics. I am particularly interested in exploring, understanding, leveraging, and quantifying the impacts of emerging and disruptive technologies (for example, Advanced Air Mobility, connected and automated vehicles, and crowdsourcing, to name just a few) on transportation systems planning, design, deployment, operation, management, and policy-making for more intelligent, efficient, sustainable, equitable, and inclusive movements of people and freight, which ultimately contribute to better progression of the human society.

My research has received support from a number of international, federal, state, and local agencies and organizations including the World Bank, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the US Department of Transportation (USDOT), the US Department of Energy (DOE), NASA, the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), the California and Illinois Departments of Transportation, and the City of Chicago. Currently, I serve as Director for Technology Transfer and Commercialization for the USDOT-funded Center for Freight Transportation for Efficient & Resilient Supply Chain. I have been active in the professional society serving many editorial roles such as: Associate Editor of Journal of Air Transport Management; Associate Editor of Transportation Letters; Handling Editor of Transportation Research Record; Editor of TRB Freight Transportation Planning and Logistics (AT015) Committee; Editorial Board Editor of Transportation Research Part B: Methodological; Editorial Board member of Transportation Research Parts C: Emerging Technologies, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Transport Policy, and Transport Economics and Management; and Guest Associate Editor of INFORMS Service Science. I also serve as Lead of the Editorial Board of the TRB Freight Transportation Planning and Logistics (AT015) committee, and a standing committee member of TRB AT015 and the TRB Transportation Network Modeling (AEP40) committees.

Research interests: 

Transportation and Logistics Systems Modeling and Analysis

New Technologies and Passenger/Goods Movement

Infrastructure Maintenance and Rehabilitation Planning