Howdy, Y’all!

Inspired by Stephen Hawking's principle that "One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect," we need to embrace imperfection to innovate and improve through engineering, constantly seeking better, adaptable, and sustainable solutions.

My vision is to advance knowledge-grounded and AI-infused transportation systems that integrate cyber, physical, and human dimensions to enhance safety, stability, intelligence, and resilience in future mobility networks.

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CVEN) at Texas A&M University (TAMU). I conduct my postdoctoral research under the supervision of Dr. Yang Zhou. My Ph.D. work was completed at TAMU under the advisement of Dr. Yunlong Zhang and Dr. Xiubin ‘Bruce’ Wang. I collaborate closely with Dr. Dominique Lord on active safety analysis, Dr. Sue Ahn from the University of Wisconsin–Madison on traffic flow theory, and Dr. Zhenzhong Tu from Computer Science at TAMU on agentic and generative AI for civil infrastructure systems.

I am open to collaboration opportunities. Feel free to contact me by email (scottlzh[AT]tamu.edu).

Texas A&M University
College Station, United States
Ph.D., Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2020–2024
Dissertation: Enhancing the Cyber-Physical Resilience of Connected Automated Vehicle Systems

Tsinghua University
Beijing, China
M.S., Department of Engineering Physics, 2017–2020
Thesis: Analysis of Operation Resilience in Metro Network Based on Passenger Flow Data

Northeastern University
Shenyang, China
B.Eng., School of Resource and Civil Engineering, 2013–2017
Thesis: Analysis of Leakage Consequences and Related Factors in Urban LPG Pipelines Using Fluent

• University Transportation Center (UTC) for Freight Transportation for Efficient & Resilient Supply Chain (FERSC) – Special Recognition of Outstanding Leadership and Services (2024)
• 2023–2024 Texas A&M University Dissertation Fellowship (2024)
• TAMU CVEN Graduate Student Travel Funds (2024)
• TAMU Graduate School Research and Presentation Travel Award (2023)
• Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) Keese-Wootan Fellowship (2022)
• ITS Texas Scholarship (2021)
• Zachry Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering Excellence Fellowship (2020)
• Tsinghua University Excellence Scholarship (2019)
• Direct Admission to Graduate School at Tsinghua University (2017)
• Outstanding Bachelor’s Graduation Thesis, Northeastern University (2017)

• UTC FERSC (2024) First Place – Research Poster Competition, Enhancing Port Resilience to Incoming Tropical Cyclones: Estimating Impact Ranking with Recommendation Algorithm. (First Author)
• Texas ITE (2024) TexITE Student Paper Award (3rd Place), Innovative Logit-Inspired Distribution for Modeling Headway of Heterogeneous Traffic Flow. (Student Mentor)
• FHWA (2023) Excellence in Highway Safety Data Award (1st Place), Equitable Traffic Crash Prediction Framework to Support Safety Improvement Grants Allocation. (Co-Leader)
• ITE (2021) Vision Zero Sandbox Design Competition – Student Chapter (1st Place), Countermeasure Selection Using Near-Miss Data to Support Vision Zero in Bellevue. (Lead in Methodology)

2025 News: My corresponding paper CyPortQA: Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models for Cyclone Preparedness in Port Operation has been accepted by the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2026).

2025 News: Five of our papers have been accepted for presentation at the 105th Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting, including one podium presentation.

2024 News: Our paper has been accepted for a podium presentation at ISTTT 25.

2023 News: I am deeply appreciative to receive the 2023–2024 Dissertation Fellowship to support the final phase of my Ph.D.

2023 News: Two of my papers have been accepted for lecture sessions and one for a poster session at the 103rd TRB Annual Meeting.

2023 News: Our paper has been accepted at ICSMD 2023.

2023 News: We won 1st place in 2023 Excellence in Highway Safety Data Award, hosted by FHWA.

2023 News: Our paper has been accepted at IEEE ITSC 2023.