NYU Shanghai Launches New Transportation Planning PhD

In partnership with the NYU Tandon School of Engineering and the NYU Department of Civil and Urban Engineering, NYU Shanghai is launching a new PhD program in Transportation Planning and Engineering. The Transportation Planning and Engineering PhD is NYU Shanghai’s seventh doctoral program.

“Shanghai is always pioneering and testing advanced technologies, particularly in transportation,” Assistant Professor Faculty Fellow of Engineering Chen Zhibin says. “An aspiring transportation engineer who chooses to conduct research here will be able to study and work on so many emerging transportation technologies, and further identify the possible challenges.”

Working in an interdisciplinary field, transportation planners use modeling data, field research, economics, and more to tackle real-world problems. Candidates with diverse academic backgrounds, in fields such as Civil Planning, Computer Science, Data Science, Environmental Engineering, and Economics, are encouraged to apply.

Intelligent transportation - electric vehicles and charging stations, self-driving cars, self-driving trucks, dockless bicycles and scooters - will likely be a focus of transportation research at NYU Shanghai, says Keith Ross, Dean of Engineering and Computer Science. “These innovations have the potential to transform cities into something completely different from what we have today,” Ross says. “One can imagine, 10-20 years in the future, cities where all the vehicles are electric and self-driving, with above-ground personalized metro systems where all the vehicles are owned, controlled, and routed by the city.”

The program will begin with a summer research rotation in Shanghai, followed by two semesters of PhD coursework at the NYU Department of Civil and Urban Engineering in New York. PhD candidates will then return to Shanghai to undertake their doctoral research under the supervision of NYU Shanghai faculty. Upon fulfilling all requirements, students will receive a PhD degree in Transportation Planning and Engineering from New York University.

Chen, who joined NYU Shanghai as a tenure-track professor this Spring and will help supervise the PhD candidates, is currently working with the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in South Korea on the investigation and analysis of wireless charging lanes which can charge electric vehicles while they are in motion.

Candidates in the program will also work closely with the College of Transportation Engineering at Tongji University on various types of emerging vehicle technologies, such as advanced parking management services and electric vehicles.

For more information about the PhD in Transportation Planning and Engineering program, prospective students can visit the following pages: NYU Shanghai PhD Programs and NYU Tandon Transportation Planning and Engineering PhD. Applications are to be submitted through the NYU Tandon Application Portal and the next application period will open in Fall 2019 for admission in 2020. Requirements are the same as for the NYU Tandon PhD in Transportation Planning and Engineering. For more detailed instructions, prospective students can contact nyush.phd@nyu.edu.