International organization awards ‘Fellow’ status to CEE assistant professor

Dr. Li Zhang, an assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering, has been named a Fellow with the Institute of Transportation Engineering (ITE). Election to the grade of fellow of the ITE recognizes transportation professionals who have met stringent requirements in the areas of professional experience, level of responsibility, professional registration and peer evaluation. The grade of fellow is the highest ITE membership grade.

With teaching interests in transportation and traffic engineering, Zhang’s primary research focus includes transportation system analysis, traffic modeling, operations research, traffic control algorithms, distributed traffic simulation, and dynamic traffic assignment. Zhang’s track record in and outside of the classroom also has been extremely successful. While serving in the role as adviser for the Mississippi State ITE student chapter, the collegiate group won the state ITE student competition every year since its inception and many other ITE student events. In addition, Zhang is the recipient of the 2010 Epps/Dart Award for Excellence in Teaching given by the Deep South Chapter of ITE.

In the research realm, Zhang has been involved in over two million dollars of externally-funded projects. Much of this work has been successfully applied to solve problems in intelligent transportation systems, traffic engineering, intermodal transportation, optimizing road geometric design, highway rail grade crossing, evacuation studies, traffic control and signal systems, work zone traffic studies, transportation safety, as well as geographic information and global positioning system applications in transportation.

Zhang earned his doctorate and master’s degrees from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.  He earned a bachelor’s degree and an additional master’s degree in civil engineering, both respectively from Shanghai Institute of Railroad Technology, located in China.

The Institute of Transportation Engineers is an international educational and scientific association of transportation professionals who are responsible for meeting mobility and safety needs. Founded in 1930, ITE has a network community of 17,000 transportation professionals working in more than 90 countries including, but not limited to transportation engineers, transportation planners, consultants, educators, and researchers.