R²ISE TRANSPORTATION LAB

The R²ISE Transportation Lab develops AI-enabled methods, models, and decision-support tools for transportation systems that are reliable, resilient, intelligent, safe, and efficient.

Led by Dr. Zihao (Scott) Li in the Department of Civil, Construction & Environmental Engineering at Marquette University, the lab works at the intersection of transportation engineering, multimodal AI, social-cyber-physical systems, traffic flow theory, connected and automated vehicles, freight systems, and infrastructure resilience.

Openings Funded Projects Publications

Marquette University campus and Milwaukee transportation landscape

Research Directions

AI for Transportation Intelligence Multimodal and agentic AI, vision-language models, benchmark development, and knowledge-grounded decision support for transportation systems.

Safety and Automation Active traffic safety, vulnerable road user protection, connected and automated vehicle control, mixed autonomy traffic, and cyberattack-resilient operations.

Resilience and Infrastructure Systems Social-cyber-physical resilience, freight and port recovery, natural hazard disruption, traffic flow modeling, and infrastructure risk analysis.

Prospective Ph.D. students, visiting students, and collaborators with overlapping interests are encouraged to review the openings, funded projects, and publications pages.

News

Sep 2026	Dr. Zihao (Scott) Li was invited to speak at the AI and Intelligent Transportation Systems Workshop at UW-Madison.
Aug 2026	Dr. Zihao (Scott) Li joins Marquette University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction & Environmental Engineering in August 2026.
Jul 2026	Our work on traffic waves of linear adaptive cruise control appears in Transportation Research Part B and was accepted at the 26th ISTTT.
Jan 2026	CyPortQA, a benchmark for multimodal large language models in cyclone preparedness for port operation, is presented as an oral presentation at AAAI 2026.

Selected Publications

TR Part B

Unveiling Traffic Wave of Linear Adaptive Cruise Control: A Second-Order Macroscopic Traffic Flow Model

Zihao Li, Q. Lin, F. Pu, and 4 more authors

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 2026

Accepted at the 26th International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory

Bib

@article{li2026trafficwave,
  title = {Unveiling Traffic Wave of Linear Adaptive Cruise Control: A Second-Order Macroscopic Traffic Flow Model},
  author = {Li, Zihao and Lin, Q. and Pu, F. and Ahn, S. and Zhang, Y. and Jiang, J. and Zhou, Y.},
  journal = {Transportation Research Part B: Methodological},
  volume = {211},
  pages = {103506},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Accepted at the 26th International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory},
}

TR Part D

U.S. Port Disruptions under Tropical Cyclones: Resilience Analysis by Harnessing Multiple-Source Dataset

C. Kuai, Zihao Li^*, Y. Zhang^*, and 3 more authors

Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 2026

Bib

@article{kuai2026port,
  title = {{U.S.} Port Disruptions under Tropical Cyclones: Resilience Analysis by Harnessing Multiple-Source Dataset},
  author = {Kuai, C. and Li, Zihao and Zhang, Y. and Wang, X. B. and Lord, D. and Zhou, Y.},
  journal = {Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment},
  volume = {157},
  pages = {105420},
  year = {2026},
}

IEEE T-ITS

Leveraging Textual Description and Structured Data for Estimating Crash Risks of Traffic Violation: A Multimodal Learning Approach

Zihao Li, C. Ma, Y. Zhou, and 2 more authors

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2025

Bib

@article{li2025multimodalcrash,
  title = {Leveraging Textual Description and Structured Data for Estimating Crash Risks of Traffic Violation: A Multimodal Learning Approach},
  author = {Li, Zihao and Ma, C. and Zhou, Y. and Lord, D. and Zhang, Y.},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems},
  volume = {26},
  number = {7},
  pages = {9201--9213},
  year = {2025},
}

AAP

Adaptive Cruise Control under Threat: A Stochastic Active Safety Analysis of Sensing Attacks in Mixed Traffic

Zihao Li, Y. Zhou, J. Jiang, and 2 more authors

Accident Analysis & Prevention, 2025

Bib

@article{li2025accattack,
  title = {Adaptive Cruise Control under Threat: A Stochastic Active Safety Analysis of Sensing Attacks in Mixed Traffic},
  author = {Li, Zihao and Zhou, Y. and Jiang, J. and Zhang, Y. and Kulkarni, M. M.},
  journal = {Accident Analysis {\&} Prevention},
  volume = {209},
  pages = {107813},
  year = {2025},
}

TR Part C

Enhancing Vehicular Platoon Stability in the Presence of Communication Cyberattacks: A Reliable Longitudinal Cooperative Control Strategy

Zihao Li, Y. Zhou^*, Y. Zhang, and 1 more author

Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 2024

Bib

@article{li2024platoon,
  title = {Enhancing Vehicular Platoon Stability in the Presence of Communication Cyberattacks: A Reliable Longitudinal Cooperative Control Strategy},
  author = {Li, Zihao and Zhou, Y. and Zhang, Y. and Li, X.},
  journal = {Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies},
  volume = {163},
  pages = {104660},
  year = {2024},
}

AAAI

CyPortQA: Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models for Cyclone Preparedness in Port Operation

C. Kuai, C. Wu, Y. Zhou, and 5 more authors

In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2026

Oral presentation

Bib

@inproceedings{kuai2026cyportqa,
  title = {{CyPortQA}: Benchmarking Multimodal Large Language Models for Cyclone Preparedness in Port Operation},
  author = {Kuai, C. and Wu, C. and Zhou, Y. and Wang, X. and Yang, T. and Tu, Z. and Li, Zihao and Zhang, Y.},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence},
  year = {2026},
  note = {Oral presentation},
}