About

I am currently a postdoc under Prof. Henry Liu (CEE and Mcity) at University of Michigan working on intelligent transportation systems and CAV. I have a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering (Transportation Science) from UC Davis, under the supervision of Prof. Yueyue Fan (CEE) and Prof. James Sharpnack (Statistics).

My research area is in the intersection of intelligent transportation networks and systems, high-dimensional machine learning and operations research. Specifically, I establish methodologies in high-dimensional statistical learning and applications in network modeling with new data (e.g. trajectory, image, lidar) and new technology (CAV, multi-modal sensors):

I establish new methodologies to solve the challenges in high-dimensional transportation systems:
- Critical information from application-driven representation learning using manifold optimization
- Interpretable and scalable nonnegative Tucker-like tensor deposition to understand taxi ride demand
- Continuous time Markov chain based filtering on directed sensor networks
I propose estimation methods to understand demand and traffic flow in stochastic transportation networks:
- Decomposition based OD demand estimation under stochastic programming framework
- Automatic trajectory-based calibration of traffic simulation
- Travel demand heterogeneity during and after the pandemic
I develop cutting-edge methods to improve CAV operation with onboard and roadside perception systems:
- Lidar-based and camera-based object detection and tracking
- Sensor fusion for CAV safety assessment

My career goal is to become a faculty in Transportation Science, and encourage more students to study transportation, supply chain and civil infrastructure systems. In my free time I enjoy playing tennis (Vamos Rafa!) and hiking in parks with families.

🎞️ CV

CV_2024_RanSun.pdf

💼 Working experience

Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, September 2023 - Present
- Supervisor: Prof. Henry Liu, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mcity
- Perception models for autonomous driving in connected urban environment
- Trajectory based mesoscopic traffic models
Research Scientist Intern at Amazon - Modeling and Optimization team, June 2022 - September 2022
- Weather-aware resilient supply chain planning and operation for Amazon middle mile networks
Data Scientist Intern at Amazon - Modeling and Optimization team, June 2021 - September 2021
- Predictive models for delivery estimate accuracy for Amazon last-mile logistics

🗺️Representative Research

Travel demand and traffic flow & Optimization and Statistics