Eric Huang, Ph.D. (Clemson University)

Join NCTSPM for this Transportation Speaker Series event, featuring Dr. Eric Huang, Assistant Professor at Clemson University. Dr. Huang will be speaking on the topic of "Optimization of Modern Transportation Systems under Large-scale Complexity, Uncertainty, and Dynamics". 

Transportation systems have been becoming much more sophisticated than ever before, largely driven by a rapid urbanization process and the increasing availability of large-scale data crowdsourced from the emerging technologies. The worldwide urbanization now requires the creation of more sustainable approaches to mitigate the effects of climate change and to manage large urban population centers. The transportation sector, which is perhaps the most important industry for a modern society, is facing a grand challenge regarding the evolution of a new energy source to reduce the dependence on oil with a concurrent improvement in air quality. Recent technological advances in alternative fuel vehicles and mobility are perhaps the greatest result of that continuing evolution.

This talk will present Huang's progressive research in understanding the large-scale complexity, uncertainty, and dynamics in the modern transport networks and integrating such effects into the optimization of the transportation systems. In particular, the large-scale complexity rises with real-world sized transport networks and is further complicated by the increasingly available mobility data. Both uncertainty and dynamics are inevitable in the development and management of transportation networks that are expected to be sustainable, resilient, and adaptive to the technological and societal changes for a long-term planning as well as real-time decisions for accommodating random demands that are over space and time.

An interdisciplinary set of methodologies and techniques has been used in my research, including optimization techniques (e.g., stochastic programming, dynamic programming, and robust optimization), optimization solution methods (e.g., decomposition and heuristic based solutions for improved solution efficiency), geographic information systems (GIS), microeconomics, simulations, and human behavior analysis, which enables to readily explore a wide range of transportation applications. This talk will demonstrate a few exemplary applications in transport energy systems, transportation infrastructure retrofit schemes, alternative mobility network development, and crowdsourced urban delivery systems. 

Dr. Huang has been an assistant professor in Civil Engineering at Clemson University since 2011. His research focuses on formulation and solutions of complex transport networks and on bridging the gap between the theory and practice for real-world large-scale transportation-infrastructure-energy problems. Dr. Huang uses a variety of optimization techniques and optimization solution methods in his research, coupled with geographic information systems (GIS), microeconomics, and simulations. He has been active in transportation and operations research communities in publishing in leading academic journals, serving as a guest editor of Transportation Research, Part C for special issues on alternative fuel vehicle transport systems, and chairing technical sessions in national and international conferences. He is a member of the TRB and INFORMS. Dr. Huang received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering with minor in Applied Mathematics from University of California, Davis in 2010, M.S. in Transportation Engineering from the National University of Singapore in 2005, and B.S. in Civil Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China in 2003. Prior to be on the faculty of Clemson, he was a Senior Associate of Energy Systems Modeling at the International Resource Group, a consulting firm for international development, in Washington D.C.