Ruinan Wang

Recently, at the highly anticipated 2025 X-GAME Shanghai Intelligent New Energy Vehicle Big Data Competition Finals, the “Team Tian Sheng Yi Dui” — composed of NYU Shanghai PhD student Wang Zilu, East China Normal University-NYU Shanghai Joint PhD program student Wang Ruinan, and research assistants Shi Zhengyu and Feng Zhanyu — was awarded the First Prize in the New Energy Vehicle Data Analysis Achievement Track. The team stood out for their exceptional collaboration and solid research capabilities. This marks the second consecutive year that the LISTS research project has received this honor.

Under the guidance of Chen Zhibin, Assistant Professor of Engineering at NYU Shanghai, the four students conducted innovative research titled “Identifying and Resolving Supply-Demand Imbalance of Community Electric Vehicle Charging Based on User Behavior Information.”  Their work focuses on identifying, tracing, and proposing solutions to alleviate charging difficulties for community EVs. The team developed models to analyze the effectiveness of three strategies in easing charging challenges:  

• Orderly charging by users,  
• Installation of additional charging facilities, and  
• Sharing of private charging piles.

Their findings offer valuable insights for the rational planning and management of community charging infrastructure to meet future demands. This award-winning project stood out among nearly 900 participants and earned high recognition from the competition judges.

We are delighted to announce that three papers from our research group have been accepted for presentation at the 2025 Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting. The TRB Annual Meeting, organized by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, is one of the most prestigious international conferences in the field of transportation research, attracting thousands of participants from academia, industry, and government each year.

Accepted Papers:

1. Liu, Y., Bian, Z., Chen, Z., Tang, Y., & Ozbay, K. (2025). Concavity-Informed Fundamental Diagram Generation for Sensorless Highway Segments.
2. Wei, J., Wang, Z., Chen, Z., & Jin, J. (2025). Planning of Truck Platooning for Road-Network Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem.
3. Wang, R., Xu, Z.*, Chen, Z., & Zhong, M. (2025). Revealing Charging Patterns of Electric Vehicles with Intrinsic Usage Heterogeneity.

We extend our heartfelt congratulations to all the authors for their outstanding achievements. These works reflect the team’s continued dedication to advancing transportation science, promoting sustainable mobility, and supporting data-driven decision-making in the evolving landscape of intelligent transportation systems.

In August, we are thrilled to celebrate the graduation of three outstanding Ph.D. students from our research group: Hao Yilang, Li Zhi, and Deng Yanling, who have all successfully defended their dissertations and received their doctoral degrees from New York University.

Their research topics address critical issues in smart transportation and electric mobility, with significant theoretical and practical contributions:

• Hao Yilang: “The Operational Planning of Truck Platooning”
• Li Zhi: “Data-Driven Approaches to the Analysis, Optimization, and Synthesis of Electric Vehicle Behavior”
• Deng Yanling: “Investigating the Potential of Mobile Charging for Electric Vehicles: from the Perspective of Economics, Planning & Operation”

They have now embarked on exciting new journeys:

• Hao Yilang has joined Amazon (U.S.) as an Applied Scientist;
• Li Zhi has received an offer from Huawei for the position of Algorithm Research Engineer;
• Deng Yanling is currently applying for a faculty position at Central South University.

We warmly congratulate them on their academic achievements and wish them continued success and fulfillment in the next stages of their careers!

Ruinan Wang, a PhD student from NYU Shanghai and a member of the research group, presented her latest work on electric vehicle (EV) charging behavior at the 2025 INFORMS International Meeting, held from July 20 to 23 in Singapore. Her presentation, titled “Revealing Charging Patterns of Electric Vehicles with Intrinsic Usage Heterogeneity,” proposed a data-driven framework for identifying EV usage types and understanding their diverse charging needs.

As EV adoption continues to rise worldwide, the study provides timely insights into how user heterogeneity shapes charging demand — offering valuable guidance for policymakers, urban planners, and infrastructure providers. By leveraging large-scale vehicle operation data, the research aims to support smarter, more adaptive planning of charging systems.

Wang’s contribution was well received and added meaningful perspectives to the broader conversation on sustainable mobility and energy-efficient transportation systems.

Prof. Zhibin Chen attended the 2025 POMS International Conference in China, held from July 11 to 14, 2025, in Hainan. At the conference, Prof. Chen presented “Planning of truck platooning for road-network capacitated vehicle routing problem”. This study optimizes the truck platooning plan for a road-network capacitated vehicle routing problem with time windows in a way to minimize the total operation cost, including vehicles’ fixed dispatch cost and energy cost, while fulfilling all delivery demands within their time window constraints.