Dr. Yao-Jan Wu is an associate professor of transportation engineering in the Civil and Architectural Engineering and Mechanics Department and the Executive (Founding) Director of the Center for Applied Transportation Sciences (CATS) at the University of Arizona (UA). Currently, Dr. Wu is the faculty advisor of the UA Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) student chapter. He has served as the Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-PI of over 40 national/international research projects.

Dr. Wu has more than 100 refereed publications, including more than 60 journal publications. He has presented his research findings more than 100 times at national and international conferences, and invited speaker events. Dr. Wu’s research interests highlight a strong connection between information technology (IT) and traditional transportation research. His research broadly covers four major fields: 1) intelligent transportation systems (e.g., advanced traffic detection technology, sensor data quality control, and computer vision applications), 2) data-driven large-scale transportation system analysis and optimization (e.g., freeway and arterial operations, system, traffic data management, mining, and analysis, and traveler behavior analysis), 3) traffic safety (e.g., accident modeling and analysis), and 4) sustainable transportation planning (e.g., transit, pedestrians, bikes, and climate change).