About Me
My name is Yiming Xu (徐一鸣). I am currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Urban Information Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, working with Dr. Junfeng Jiao. My primary research interest lies in developing and applying artificial intelligence to enhance the sustainability, efficiency, and safety of urban mobility systems. I earned my Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Florida, where I conducted research in the Smart, Equitable, Resilient Mobility Systems Lab with my advisor Dr. Xilei Zhao. My doctoral research focuses on Machine Learning/Deep Learning, Travel Demand Modeling, Explainable AI, Shared Mobility, and Evacuation. I was honored to complete my dissertation under a distinguished committee including Dr. Lily Elefteriadou, Dr. Siva Srinivasan, and Dr. Daisy Wang. Before becoming a Ph.D. student at UF, I received my B.S. and M.S. degrees in Transportation Engineering from the College of Transportation Engineering, Tongji University, where I studied vehicle motion planning and autonomous vehicle safety testing under the supervison of Dr. Jian Sun.
My research philosophy is grounded in the belief that the potential of big data and AI is best unlocked when anchored by domain theory. Consequently, my work integrates transportation domain knowledge with advanced data-driven methods, including Machine Learning, Explainable AI (XAI), Large Language Models (LLMs), and Digital Twins, with applications in travel behavior, traffic safety, shared mobility, electrification of transport, autonomous vehicles, micromobility, and intelligent transportation systems. To date, I have authored more than 20 peer-reviewed journal papers and over 20 conference papers in AI, urban mobility, and transportation systems.
🔥 I am seeking faculty opportunities starting in 2026 and welcome inquiries regarding collaboration or recruitment.
News
2025.11: Our paper, “A Decentralized Digital Twin via Crowdsourced Sensing and Browser-Based Edge Computation,” has been accepted by AAAI 2026 Deployable AI workshop.
2025.10: Our paper, “LLM-Powered Digital Twins for Interactive Urban Mobility Simulation: Integrating SUMO with AI Agents,” has been accepted by NeurIPS 2025 UrbanAI workshop. [Code][Video]
2025.10: 2 papers have been accepted by TRB 2026.
2025.10: Our paper, “Street Semantic Tree: A Knowledge-driven GeoAI Framework for Urban E-scooter Ridership Classification,” has been published in International Journal of Geographical Information Science. [Paper Link]
2025.10: Our paper, “How Do EV Crashes Differ from ICEV Crashes: A Comparative Study of Pennsylvania”, has been published in Journal of Safety Research. [Paper Link]
2025.10: Our paper, “Navigating LLM Ethics: Advancements, Challenges, and Future Directions,” has been published in AI Ethics. [Paper Link]
2025.10: Our paper, “HLCG: A Hierarchical Lane-Changing Gaming Decision Model for Heterogeneous Traffic Flow on Two-Lane Highways,” has been published in Transportation Research Record. [Paper Link]
2025.09: Our paper, “Utility or equity? Analyzing public electric vehicle charger allocations in Austin, Texas”, has been published in Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment. [Paper Link]
2025.06: I gave a talk, “Urban Digital Twins for Smart Cities,” at the City of Austin - Digital Twin Partnership In Action workshop in Austin, TX.
2025.06: I gave a talk, “LLM-Enabled Transportation Digital Twin for Smart Cities,” at the 2025 Smart Cities and AI Symposium in Austin, TX.
2025.04: I gave a talk, “Digital Twins and LLM Agents for Smart Cities,” at the 2025 Good Systems Symposium in Austin, TX.
2025.01: I presented our work, “An Urban Digital Twin Framework for Sustainable Transportation and Smart Cities: A Case Study of Austin, TX,” at TRB 2025.
2024.10: 8 papers have been accepted by TRB 2025, including 1 presentation and 7 posters.
2024.10: Excited to deploy my new personal website.