Xianbiao (XB) Hu
Associate Professor of Transportation Engineering, Penn State · Director, Smart Mobility Lab
XB is pronounced "Sean-Bell".
Automated & Cooperative Driving, Work Zone Automation (ATMA), Transportation Electrification, Transportation System Modeling
Dr. Xianbiao (XB) Hu is an Associate Professor of Transportation Engineering at Penn State and directs the Smart Mobility Lab. His research covers automated vehicle perception and planning, physical AI and foundation models (LLMs and VLMs) for transportation, large-scale telematics data analytics, dynamic system modeling, and transportation electrification.
His research has been supported by 43 funded projects (35 external) totaling $22.6 million, from sponsors including USDOT, the Department of Energy, PennDOT, and Pennsylvania DEP. He has published 92 journal articles. He is Managing Editor of the Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems and chairs the IEEE ITSS Technical Committee on Intelligent Electrified Mobility Operations and Infrastructure.
From startup to academia
Before returning to academia, XB spent six years building Metropia, a University of Arizona spinoff that tried to fix congestion by changing behavior instead of building roads. Metropia predicted future traffic, offered travelers several departure times with predicted travel times, and rewarded them for choices that relieved congestion. A field study in Los Angeles showed promising behavior changes and travel time savings.
XB joined as a student in 2011 and, by the time he left in 2017, had been programmer, algorithm developer, system architect, cloud and API engineer, routing lead, project and product manager, and finally Director of R&D and General Manager of its subsidiary in China. Along the way he managed an FHWA-funded study on Pay-As-You-Drive-And-You-Save (PAYDAYS) insurance, which used smartphone GPS data and traffic context to rate driving risk.
That experience still shapes the lab: a preference for problems that matter to agencies and users, models that run in real systems, and research that is tested in the field.
Metropia on video
What is Metropia?
Why does traffic congestion happen?
PAYDAYS usage-based insurance study, executive summary
KGUN-9: UA startup designs app to end traffic jams
Career
- 2025–present
Penn State
Associate Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering
- 2021–2025
Penn State
Assistant Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering
- 2017–2021
Missouri University of Science and Technology
Assistant Professor
- 2011–2017
Metropia Inc., Tucson, AZ
Founding team member; Director of R&D
- 2016–2017
University of Arizona
Affiliate Professor
- 2013
University of Arizona
Ph.D., Transportation Engineering (advisor: Yi-Chang Chiu)
- 2009
Tongji University
M.S., Transportation Engineering
- 2006
Tongji University
B.S., Transportation Engineering
Service
- Managing Editor, Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems
- Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems; IEEE Electrification Magazine; Transportation Research Record; International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology
- Chair, IEEE ITSS Technical Committee on Intelligent Electrified Mobility Operations and Infrastructure (E-Mobility)
- Representative and voting member, IEEE Transportation Electrification Council (for IEEE ITSS)
- Research Coordinator and Paper Review Coordinator, TRB Committee on Maintenance and Operations Management (AKR10), 2021–2025
- Member, TRB Standing Committee on Maintenance Management (AKJ14), 2025–2028
- Board of Directors, Chinese Overseas Transportation Association (COTA)
- Penn State Representative, Smart Belt Coalition, 2023–present
Honors
- Penn State Emerging Academic Leaders (PSEAL) program, 2026
- Harry West Teaching Award, Penn State, 2024
- Best Editor Award, International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology, 2024
- Outstanding Reviewer, Transportation Research Part D and ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A, 2023
- Game Changer Academies Panel Fellow, NSF CMMI, 2022
- Excellent Associate Editor, International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology, 2021
- Joseph H. Senne Jr. Academy of Civil Engineers Faculty Scholarly Achievement Award, Missouri S&T, 2020
- Outstanding Teaching Award, Missouri S&T, 2020
- University of Missouri System Teaching Scholar, 2020
- ASCE Excellence in Civil Engineering Education (ExCEEd) Fellowship, 2019
- Excellent Paper Award, World Transport Convention, 2018
Teaching
CE 100S First-Year Seminar
Penn State
Fall 2024, Fall 2025, Spring 2026
CE 321 Highway Engineering
Penn State
Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2025, Spring 2026
CE 521 Transportation Networks and System Analysis
Penn State
Fall 2022, Spring 2024, Fall 2025
CE 597 Transportation Data Science
Penn State
Fall 2024
CE 5513 Traffic Engineering
Missouri S&T
Fall 2018–2020
CE 5515 Advanced Traffic Operation and Capacity Analysis
Missouri S&T
Spring 2018–2020
Selected publications
All publicationsLightweight LiDAR-Based Cooperative Localization Model for Asymmetric Leader-Follower Cooperative Driving Automation System
Highly Automated Vehicle Policy in the United States: Six Questions Exposing the Structural Misalignment Between Perception, Regulation, and Enforcement
Public or Private? A Unified Demand–Supply Coupled Framework for EV Infrastructure Investment
CCFM: Collision-Constrained Flow Matching for Safety-Critical Scenario Generation
A Fundamental Diagram-Consistent Fluid Queue Model for Dynamic Throughput under Heavy Traffic Congestion
VisionEV: Multimodal Large Language Models for Spatially Aware Electric Vehicle Charging Demand Prediction Using Satellite Imagery
Optimizing Maintenance Routes for Highway Infrastructure Using Leader-Follower Autonomous Vehicles
Confidence-Gated Topology Reasoning with Fiducial Marker Priors for Occlusion-Robust Lane Graph Prediction
Autonomous Truck Mounted Attenuator (ATMA) Toolkit
Equitable Urban Electric Vehicle Charging: Feasibility and Benefits of Streetlight Charging in Kansas City Right-of-Way
A Review of Volume-Delay Functions Integrating Traditional Models and Emerging AI Technologies
Analytical Formulation of Autonomous Vehicle Freeway Merging Control with State-Dependent Discharge Rates
Learning-Based Demand-Supply-Coupled Charging Station Location Problem for Electric Vehicle Demand Management
Analytical Approximation and Calibration of Roundabout Capacity: A Merging State Transition-Based Modeling Approach
Identification of Operational Design Domain for Autonomous Truck Mounted Attenuator System on Multilane Highways
Evaluation Methodology of Leader-Follower Autonomous Vehicle System for Work Zone Maintenance
Analytical Characterization of Multi-State Effective Discharge Rates for Bus-Only Lane Conversion Scheduling Problem