Dr. Lei Yu

Dr. Yu is Professor and Chairman of the Transportation Studies Department at Texas Southern University. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in Civil/Transportation Engineering from Queen’s University (Canada) in 1994, Master of Engineering Degree in Production and Systems Engineering from Nagoya Institute of Technology (Japan), and Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Transportation Management Engineering from Beijing Jiaotong University (China). During his tenure at TSU, he has been the driving force to improve its academic programs and develop advanced transportation laboratories. Under his leadership, TSU’s transportation labs have successfully acquired top-end equipment such as full-motion driving simulator, mobile traffic van, portable emission monitoring system, and real-time traffic surveillance system through Houston TranStar. Dr. Yu has a wide spectrum of research interests and expertise related to highway traffic design and operations, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), transportation planning and modeling, and vehicle emission modeling. In the past 11 years, he has served as the Principal Investigator (PI) for 35 projects sponsored by Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Southwest Region University Transportation Center (SWUTC), Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC), etc. Through these projects, he has established a solid knowledge base in the respective areas and gained extensive experience in project management skills. Dr. Yu is the author of over 120 research papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings, and 35 project reports. He is currently a Cheung Kong Scholar of Beijing Jiaotong University awarded by the Ministry of Education in China and Li Ka Shine Foundation in Hong Kong. Professionally, Dr. Yu is an active member of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the Transportation Research Board (TRB). He is registered engineer in the state of Texas.