Ziran Wang

Assistant Professor

Purdue University, College of Engineering

ziran at purdue dot edu
HAMP G133, 550 Stadium Mall Drive, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907

Dr. Ziran Wang is currently a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at the Purdue University College of Engineering, part of the Autonomous and Connected Systems Initiative and the Lyles School of Civil Engineering. He leads the Purdue Digital Twin Lab (we are hiring), which aims to build digital replicas of real-world entities based on AI, big data, cloud/edge computing, and mixed reality.

Dr. Wang was a Principal Researcher at Toyota Motor North America R&D - InfoTech Labs, where he led the Digital Twin Roadmap. He received the Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Riverside under the supervision of Dr. Matthew J. Barth. His Ph.D. dissertation is "Developing Agent-Based Distributed Cooperative Vehicle-Infrastructure Systems in the Connected and Automated Vehicle Environment". Dr. Wang is an author of 40+ refereed papers and 50+ patent applications. His research achievements have been demonstrated on Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and acknowledged by National Center for Sustainable Transportation Dissertation Award issued by U.S. Department of Transportation, and by the SAE Vincent Bendix Automotive Electronics Engineering Award (i.e., best paper in 2019) and the SAE Arch T. Colwell Merit Award (i.e., best paper in 2021).

Dr. Wang is serving various roles in multiple academic organizations, including:
-Associate editor of IEEE Internet of Things Journal, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, SAE International Journal of Connected and Automated Vehicles, and Frontiers in Sustainable Cities-Urban Transportation Systems and Mobility
-Guest editor of IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems
-Handling editor of SAE Non-Event Technical Papers
-Founding committee chair in the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society, Technical Committee on Internet of Things in Intelligent Transportation Systems
-Poster/demo co-chair in the 2023 IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference (VNC)
-Committee member in the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society, Technical Committee on Cooperative and Connected Vehicles, the IEEE Control Systems Society, Technical Committee on Smart Cities, and the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, Technical Committee on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems
-Technical program committee member in the 14th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS), the First IEEE International Conference on Mobility: Operations, Services, and Technologies (MOST), the 2021 IEEE 94th Vehicular Technology Conference: VTC2021-Fall, and the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Digital Twin and Parallel Intelligence
-International advisory committee member in the 16th IEEE International Conference on Service Operations and Logistics, and Informatics (SOLI 2022)

Announcements:
-Purdue DT Lab always looks for self-motivated talents to join as PhD students or onsite/remote interns, and please refer to this page for more information.

Check out first-of-its-kind field test of vehicle-to-cloud based cooperative merging! More details can be found in the paper.

A talk at Purdue in Oct. 2022 that summarized Dr. Wang's research activities since 2017. More details can be found in the paper.

Background

Purdue University, College of Engineering

West Lafayette, IN
Jul. 2022 - Present
Assistant Professor

University of California, Riverside

Riverside, CA
Sep. 2015 - Jun. 2019
Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering

IEEE Technical Committee on "Internet of Things in Intelligent Transportation"

IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society
Apr. 2021 - Present
Committee Chair

Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications

Beijing, China
Aug. 2011 - Jun. 2015
B.E. in Mechanical Engineering and Automation

Toyota Motor North America, InfoTech Labs

Mountain View, CA
Jul. 2019 - Jun. 2022
Principal Researcher

Chongqing Nankai Secondary School

Chongqing, China
Sep. 2005 - Jun. 2011
High School Diploma

Highlights

Digital Twin

The Digital Twin is a digital replica of the physical entity in the real world, which leverages big data and cloud/edge computing to benefit the mobility system consisting of human, vehicle, and traffic.

Personalized Behavior Modeling

Personalized driver behavior (or more generally human factor) plays a crucial role in human-autonomy teaming, especially when the driver is operating Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS).

Human-In-The-Loop Simulation

Driving simulator allows human to drive vehicles modeled in a virtual environment, enabling comparison between proposed connected and automated vehicle technology with human driving behaviors.

Cooperative Ramp Merging

With advanced Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication techniques, connected and automated vehicles can schedule their sequence and plan their speed trajectories ahead of time to avoid last-second speed change at the merging point.

Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC)/Platooning

CACC systems allow connected and automated vehicles to communicate with each other, and coordinate their maneuvers in a form of platoon, where one vehicle follows another with a constant velocity and/or time headway.

Cooperative Eco-Driving

With advanced Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication technique, "cooperative eco-driving" provides real-time advices to drivers based on real-time traffic and infrastructure conditions.