Wei-Bin Zhang

Wei-Bin Zhang is a Research Engineer at the California PATH Program, Institute of Transportation Studies of University of California at Berkeley. Mr. Zhang received advanced degrees in communication and control engineering from Northern Jiaotong University, where he has extensive training in safety design and safety verification for railway control systems. Between 1982 and 1987, Mr. Zhang was a Lecturer at Northern Jiaotong University and taught railway interlocking and blocking systems and was involved in earlier development of railway computer control systems. Both his teaching and research focuses on fail-safe oriented system design principles. Mr. Zhang is also involved in analyses and certification of advanced railway control systems.

In 1987, Mr. Zhang joined the Institute of Transportation Studies and participated in the early founding of the California PATH Program. Mr. Zhang has become a national leader in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) research. Between 1987 and 1994, his primary research is in the area of Advanced Vehicle Control and Safety Systems (AVCSS) technologies, among which he developed magnetic guidance system concept that was later adopted for various applications worldwide. Between 1994 and 1995, he was the Technical Director of National Automated Highway Systems Consortium (NAHSC), led by the U.S. Department of Transportation and General Motors. He was responsible for overseeing the technical activities of the overall program. Mr. Zhang later managed the preparation of the ‘platoon’ demonstration for a U.S. Congress-mandated national technical feasibility demonstration of Automated Highway Systems in 1997. Since 1997, Mr. Zhang worked with California Department of Transportation, U.S. DOT and local agencies to establish various research and deployment programs at PATH and led the efforts to transform PATH from a Caltrans-focused research program to an entrepreneurial multi-faceted applied research and development organization, obtaining and delivering many internationally-renowned ITS research projects. Mr. Zhang has published over two hundred papers and reports. He served on various Technical and program committees for TRB, ITS America and APTA. Mr. Zhang is a senior member of IEEE and is currently a member of Board of Governor and the Vice President for Conference of IEEE ITS Society.

In late 2014, Mr. Zhang was awarded an elevation to the grade of IEEE Fellow.  This award comes with the citation “For contribution to cooperative highway automation system,” in recognition to his scientific leadership on numerous projects at PATH throughout the years.