Our Team

Shenhao Wang

DIRECTOR, URBAN AI LAB

Assistant Professor in Artificial Intelligence, University of Florida (UFL)

Program Director, M.S. in Urban Analytics, UFL

Researcher & PI, MIT Mobility Lab & Media Lab, MIT

Dr. Shenhao Wang’s research centers on pioneering interdisciplinary work at the intersection of urban science, network dynamics, and artificial intelligence, driving theoretical innovation, educational advance, and practical social impact. As the Founding Director of Urban AI Lab, Dr. Shenhao Wang leads to create a more sustainable, intelligent, and equitable urban future with artificial intelligence. His multi-million-dollar research grant has been funded by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), University of Florida, as well as industrial and institutional partners. His publications has been published on Nature Cities, Transportation Research Part A, Part B & Part C, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, and Proceedings of ACM Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining.

  • Computer and Urban Science

  • M.S. in Transportation, MIT

    Master of City Planning, MIT

  • B.A. in Law

    Bachelor of Architecture

  • B.A. in Economics

  • Yunhan Zheng

    POSTDOC RESEARCHER

    PH.D & POSTDOC, URBAN AI LAB & SINGAPORE-MIT ALLIANCE OF RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY (SMART)

    Yunhan earned her Ph.D. from MIT (2024) and completed dual Master’s degrees in City Planning and Transportation at MIT (2021). She obtained dual Bachelor’s degrees in Urban Management and Economics from Peking University. Her research area is the intersection of Causal Inference, Urban Computing, Transportation Economics and Policy, Travel Decisions and Urban Network. Yunhan's research has been published on top journals such as Nature Cities, Transportation Research Part A, Part B & Part C, IEEE, etc. In her spare time, she loves cooking, playing badminton and playing the piano.

  • Joseph Rodriguez

    RESEARCH ASSOCIATE

    PH.D CANDIDATE, NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

    Third year PhD candidate at Northeastern University, working with Prof. Haris Koutsopoulos and Prof. Shenhao Wang on the application of AI/ML methods for real-time control of fixed and flexible transit systems, including it's implementability on the field. His experience includes leading the testing of control strategies in a bus route in Chicago.

  • Zhanhong Cheng

    POSTDOC RESEARCHER

    POSTDOC @ URBAN AI LAB, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

    Zhanhong Cheng is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Urban AI Laboratory, University of Florida. He earned his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from McGill University in 2022 and holds both an M.S. (2018) and a B.S. (2016) in Transportation Engineering from Harbin Institute of Technology. His research focuses on data-driven innovations across three interrelated areas: public transit (e.g., destination inference, travel time and demand forecasting), multimodal travel behavior (e.g., metro, bike-sharing, E-taxi), and spatiotemporal modeling (e.g., traffic/demand forecasting and imputation). He is passionate about leveraging tools like probabilistic models, AI, and machine learning to create more sustainable, efficient, and equitable transportation systems.

  • Yuzhou Chen

    POSTDOC RESEARCHER

    POSTDOC @ URBAN AI LAB, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

    Yuzhou Chen is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Urban AI Lab, University of Florida. His research intersects urban change detection, the dynamics of shrinking cities, and spatial flow analysis within urban networks, with focus on developing innovative spatial analysis techniques that reveal the complexities of urban transformations. Yuzhou earned his Ph.D. in Geography and Environmental Science and Policy (2024), and M.S. in Urban and Regional Planning (2018) from the University of South Florida. He completed his B.S. in Urban and Rural Planning at the Harbin Institute of Technology (2015). Yuzhou's research has been published in leading academic journals and has significantly advanced the understanding of spatial dynamics in urban settings.

  • Ryan Lester

    RESEARCH ASSOCIATE

    MASTER IN URBAN & REGIONAL PLANNING CANDIDATE, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

    Ryan is a second-year master's student in urban and regional planning at the University of Florida and a research fellow at Architecture Sarasota. With a bachelor’s degree from UF in sustainability and the built environment, Ryan's research centered on the inequities of resilience planning and the involvement of ethnic minority stakeholders in Nantucket, MA’s future planning efforts. In his master's program, Ryan’s research interests lie in urban data analytics, particularly in analyzing social mobility within U.S. cities.

  • Mia Ciceri

    RESEARCH ASSISTANT

    M.S IN URBAN ANALYTICS CANDIDATE, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

    Mia is a first-year Master’s student in Urban Analytics at University of Florida. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Geography at University of Florida, Cum Laude with a certificate in Geospatial Information Analysis.

  • Dingyi Zhuang

    RESEARCH ASSOCIATE

    PH.D CANDIDATE, MIT

    Dingyi is a third-year Ph.D student at MIT. He completed his Master’s degree in Civil Engineering at McGill University in 2021. Before joining MIT, he received his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research interests lie in spatial-temporal data mining and urban computing. His current research focuses on developing deep uncertainty models in demand modeling and interpreting the traffic network behaviors with Graph Neural Networks. Outside of school, Dingyi enjoys photography.

PAST MEMBERS

  • Duxixi (Ada) Shen

    MARKETING MANAGER, 2023-2024

    RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, STARTING FROM 2024

    Duxixi (Ada) Shen received her Master of Regional Planning from Cornell University and B.E of Urban and Rural Planning from Sun Yat-sen University. Ada specializes in urban spatial data analysis, infrastructure and economic development, and zoning studies with a concentration on urban justice and sustainability. In her spare time, Ada likes to play piano, do photography, and record her traveling experience as a vlogger.

    Ada was a Research Intern at MIT and UF since 2022. Ada played a crucial role as part of the founding team in managing Lab's marketing, recruitment, and outreach. Ada is currently a Research Associate of Local Government Restructuring Lab at Cornell University.

  • Jinghao Cao

    RESEARCH ASSISTANT, 2023-2024

    PH.D CANDIDATE, NEW JERSEY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, STARTING FROM 2024

    Jinghao was a Research Assistant at Urban AI Lab while pursing his M.S. in Information Systems & Operations Management at University of Florida. Jinghao received a Bachelor’s degree in Information Engineering from South China Normal University. His research interest lies in using machine learning to predict travel demand. He has conducted research focusing on Florida’s travel demand prediction by using satellite and street view imagery.

    Jinghao contributed to the Lab's research, operations and documentation as well as developed sample code for tutorial and database. Supervised by Dr. Shenhao Wang, Jinghao's research work was accepted by Transportation Research Board (TBR) annual conference. Jinghao is pursuing his Ph.D degree at NJIT after graduated from UF.

  • Qingyi Wang

    RESEARCHER ASSOCIATE, 2022-2024

    SENIOR DATA SCIENTIST, BOSTON CONSULTING GROUP (BCG) X, STARTING FROM 2024

    PH.D, MIT, 2024

    Qingyi was a Research Associate worked with Dr. Shenhao Wang at MIT and UFL since 2018. She received her Ph.D in Transportation at MIT in 2024. She graduated with a Bachelor’s of Applied Science in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto. Her master’s thesis co-supervised by Dr. Shenhao Wang was on the estimation of bus operator absence and overtime availability, and the effective scheduling of the extraboard operators to cover such absences. Qingyi is currently a Senior Data Scientist at BCG X in Boston.