Dr. Yinhai Wang is a professor in transportation engineering and the founding director of the Smart Transportation Applications and Research Laboratory (STAR Lab) at the University of Washington (UW). He also serves as director for Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans), USDOT University Transportation Center for Federal Region 10, director for the Northwestern Tribal Technical Assistance Program (NW TTAP) Center and director for Washington State Transportation Center (TRAC).

He is currently chair of the AI and Advanced Computing Applications Committee at Transportation Research Board (TRB), vice president of the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC), chair of the Committee on Technical Advancement at American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the Connected and Automated Transportation Special Section Editor for ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering Part A: Systems.

He was the 2018-2019 president of ASCE Transportation & Development Institute (T&DI), founding co-chair of the ASCE Connected and Automated Vehicle Impact Committee (2017-2022), an elected governor for the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS) (2011-2013, and a member of the IEEE Smart Cities Steering Committee (2013-2018). His active research fields include traffic sensing, AI methods and applications, transportation data science, edge computing, transportation safety, traffic operations and simulation and smart urban mobility. He received the 2023 ASCE Francis C. Turner award and the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Innovation in Education Award for 2018.

His research work has also been recognized by numerous paper awards, such as the 2022 Outstanding Paper Award from the IEEE International Conference on Digital Twins and Parallel Intelligence, IEEE International Smart Cities Conference’s Best Paper Award for 2020 and ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering Best Paper Award for 2003. He is a professional engineer registered in Washington, a member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences, a Distinguished Member of ASCE and a fellow of both IEEE and ITE.