Profile

Dr Yu Jiang is an Associate Professor at Lancaster University. Prior to this, he worked at the Technical University of Denmark, the University of Oxford, and the University of Hong Kong. He specialises in applying operational research methodologies to analyse, model, and optimise urban transportation systems. He has published more than 80 articles in leading international journals and is a top author worldwide in the field of “transit assignment,” focused on predicting public transport passenger route choices using mathematical models. He is a reviewer for more than 30 leading international journals and has been invited to review grant applications by prestigious funding councils in Hong Kong and several European countries.

He has collaborated with the main public transport operators in the Copenhagen metropolitan area, such as MOVIA and DSB. Specifically, he developed models to improve the coordination between different operators at the network level, enhance service coverage by considering cultural diversity, equality, and inclusivity, and reduce passengers' journey times by optimising schedule synchronisation. Moreover, he contributed to the routing and demand prediction for the largest autonomous shuttle tests in Denmark. Recently, in cooperation with KPMG, he has been working on developing an AI-TransitDashboard, a unified intelligent data-driven platform for monitoring and optimising bus operations, and demonstrated that bus schedule synchronisation in the Lancaster area could be improved by more than 25% with his optimisation model.

His work has been funded by the European Union, Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond, the Otto Mønsted Foundation, the EuroTech Alliance, and the Royal Society of the United Kingdom. Notably, he received the prestigious DFF-Research Project grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark. He also serves as a task leader in a Horizon Europe project dedicated to planning the future of Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM), with Oxfordshire and the West Midlands as key demonstration sites.

He is looking for students interested in applying operations research techniques to tackle urban transportation and logistics challenges and promote sustainable development. Talent students with ambitions to create fundamental methodological contributions and enjoy reading, mathematical modelling, programming, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and work-life balance are strongly encouraged to apply.

Former PhD students have gone on to positions such as postdoctoral researcher at MIT, postdoctoral researcher at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), A*STAR Singapore, Dalian Maritime University, and other renowned institutions.