Yu (Marco) Nie

Assistant Professor

A328 Technological Inst.
2145 Sheridan Road
Evanston, IL 60208-3109

E-mail address: y-nie@northwestern.edu
Phone: (847) 467-0502
Fax: (847) 491-4011

Curriculum Vitae:

Education

• B.E. Structural Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China,
• M.E. Transportation Engineering, National University of Singapore
• Ph.D. Transportation Engineering, University of California, Davis

Research

My research fields include network optimization, traffic flow theory and traffic simulation. My Ph.D. work was focused on the estimation of time-dependent travel demands, which play a crucial role in urban transportation planning and operations.

I've developed a polymorphic traffic simulation platform that integrates a variety of traffic flow models. This is a component of the Toolkit of Network Modeling (TNM), a general programming solution to various network problems, which I designed and implemented.

My recent research also looks at optimal routing problems in stochastic networks, dynamic traffic assignment problems and the mechanisms causing oscillations and gridlocks in urban traffic.

Dissertation.

Honors and Awards

• Louis Berger Junior Professor in Civil Engineering, 2006
• John Muir Fellowship, University of California, Davis 2003 - 2004

Selected Publications

• Nie, Y. and H. M. Zhang (2008) Oscillatory traffic flow patterns induced by queue spillback in a simple road network. Transportation Science, 42 (2), 236-248.
• Zhang, H. M., Y. Nie and Z. Qian (2008) Estimating time-dependent freeway O-D demands with di®erent data coverage: a sensitivity analysis. Transportation Research Record, accepted
• Nie, Y. and H. M. Zhang. (2008) A one-level O-D estimation approach based on relaxation. Networks and Spatial Economics, on-line, DOI: 10.1007/s11067-007-9059-y
• Nie, Y. and H. M. Zhang. (2008) A variational inequality approach for inferring dynamic origin-destination travel demands. Transportation Research Part B, 42, 635-662.
• Nie, Y., Jingtao Ma and H. M. Zhang. (2007) A polymorphic dynamic network loading model. Computer-Aided Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, 23 (2), 86 - 103.
• Nie, Y. and H. M. Zhang. (2007) Solving the dynamic user optimal assignment problem considering queue spillback. Networks and Spatial Economics, on-line, DOI: 10.1007/s11067- 007-9022-y.
• Shen, W., Y. Nie, and H. M. Zhang. (2007) A dynamic network simplex method for designing emergency evacuation plans. Transportation Research Record, 2022, 83-93.
• Bai, S., Y. Nie, and D. Niemeier. (2007) The impact of speed post-processing methods on regional mobile emissions estimation. Transportation Research Part D, 12, 307-324.
• Shen, W., Y. Nie and H. M. Zhang. (2007) On path marginal cost analysis and its relation to dynamic system-optimal traffic assignment.  In the Proceedings of the 17th International
• Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory (A peer reviewed series since 1959), pp 319