Dr. Taylor Li is an assistant professor at University of Texas in Arlington. Before joined to UT Arlington, he was an assistant professor at Mississippi State University. His research areas is in traffic network modeling and traffic signal control systems. Dr. Li conduct both theoretical research and applied research. He has published 18 peer-reviewed journal papers and over 40 peer-reviewed proceedings.
Dr. Li serves as a member of TRB traffic simulation committee (ACP80) and he is a handling editor of Transportation Research Record.

Sai Sirandas is a Senior Transportation Engineer in Fehr & Peers’ San Francisco office. Sai has led and worked on a variety of project types including travel behavior forecasting, multi-modal traffic operations and simulation, and mesoscopic and dynamic traffic assignment modeling. Sai has a high degree of proficiency and project experience in software tools such as Visum, Visum, Cube, Vistro, Synchro and SimTraffic, and relevant programming interfaces. Sai enjoys working in the complex multi-modal environments in the San Francisco Bay Area and the challenges and opportunities it presents.

Ron is a senior transportation engineer/planner in Fehr & Peers’ Walnut Creek office. Ron has extensive experience with traffic operations analysis, including performance measure evaluation, needs assessment planning and identification of adequate transportation infrastructure improvements. He is an active member of Fehr & Peers’ Forecasting & Multimodal Operations Discipline Group and is considered an expert in a variety of traffic operations analysis software such as VISSIM, VISUM, VISTRO, Synchro, SimTraffic, and FREQ analysis methodologies. Ron regularly provides in-house training courses on standard traffic engineering software and traffic engineering principles. Ron has applied his comprehensive expertise to develop multimodal transportation system improvements for all users in order to create more livable communities.

Dr. Joshua Auld is a Principal Computational Transportation Engineer and Manager of the Transportation Systems and Mobility team in the Vehicle and Mobility Simulations Group at the Argonne National Laboratory Center for Transportation Research. He is an expert in agent-based modeling, behavioral analysis, transportation simulation and travel data collection and is the lead designer of the POLARIS transportation simulation system. His research focuses on traveler behavior and decision making - from both a modeling and data collection perspective - and the impact that connectivity, automation and control have on travel demand and transportation. Dr. Auld received his Doctorate from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2011 in Civil and Materials Engineering. He is the author of over 50 peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters and editorials, and is currently a member of the TRB Transportation Demand Forecasting and Traffic Simulation Committees.

Karina Meneses is an Autonomous Vehicles Engineering PhD student under the ECE department at the Ohio State University. She holds a Mathematics B.S. from the University of California, San Diego. She specializes in the design and testing of decision making algorithms for autonomous vehicles as well as the simulation of end-to-end and modular designs. She has worked on creating simulation environments for testing AVs from a traffic and a vehicle dynamics point of view. Her skill-set encompasses various topics in programming and algorithm design.

Zach Needell is a Project Scientist in the Sustainable Energy and Environmental Systems Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, where he co-leads development of the BEAM model. His research interests include travel demand modeling, energy system modeling, and mobility, climate, and energy policy. He holds a PhD in Transportation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his research focused on integrating behavioral factors and transportation system modeling into evaluating emerging energy technologies.