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

• General research interest: My research tackles large-scale complex engineering systems that have a network structure. With a focus on transportation, I am interested in enhancing the mobility, reliability and sustainability of the transportation systems by integrating emerging capabilities of data acquisition and computing technologies with methodological advances. I frequently apply techniques from the areas of network analysis, traffic flow theory and simulation, transportation economics and optimization. I often approach my problems by revealing the mathematical properties embedded in their complex network structures and developing models and algorithm that lead to better solutions.
• Recent research: A primary focus of my recent research is transportation decision-making problems under uncertainty, which range from long-term infrastructure decisions subject to various social, economic and environmental uncertainties to real-time traffic management in the event of terrorist attacks and natural disasters. My current research activities include: 1) Develop high-performance algorithms for the traffic assignment problem, one of the cornerstones of urban transportation planning. The research results promise to help transportation agencies to produce more precise and consistent predictions of travel patterns; 2) Examine dynamic properties of traffic systems (e.g., oscillations triggered by queue spillback) and their consequences on network models that are often used in urban travel forecasting and real-time traffic management; and 3) Explore the equity issue in congestion pricing, which is one of the key arguments against the idea of relieving congestion by pricing roads. 
• 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.

 

Dissertation.

Teaching Activities

1. Transportation System Operations, Winter 2007, Winter 2008, Fall 2008
2. Transportation System Analysis I, Spring 2007, Spring 2008, Fall 2008
3. Transportation System Analysis II, Spring 2008

Professional Activities

• Editorial Advisory Board, Transportation Research Part B: Methodology, April 2009-present
• Transportation Research Board (TRB) Transportation Network Modeling (ADB30), National Research Council, March 2009-present
• Session Chair, ADB30 (Transportation Network Modeling Committee), 87th Annual Meeting of Transportation Research Board. 2008
• Session Chair, Tranportation and Logistics Cluster, the INFORMS Annual Meeting, 2007 and 2008
• Review panel member, National Science Foundation Civil and Mechanic Engineering, May 2007, June 2009.
• Member: Institute of Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS), American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)

Honors and Awards

• Louis Berger Junior Professor in Civil Engineering, 2006
• The Searle Center for Teaching Excellence Fellow, Northwestern University, 2007-2008
• John Muir Fellowship, University of California, Davis 2003 - 2004

Selected Publications

• Nie, Y. (2009) A class of bush-based algorithms for the traffic assignment problem. Transportation Research Part B, in press.
• Nie, Y. (2009) Equilibrium analysis of macroscopic traffic oscillations. Transportation Research Part B, in press.
• X. Wu and Y. Nie (2009) Implementation issues in approximate algorithms for reliable a priori shortest path problem. Journal of the Transportation Research Board, in press.
• Zhang, H.M., J.Ma and Y.Nie (2009) A local synchronization control scheme for congested interchange areas in a freeway corridor. Journal of the Transportation Research Board, in press.
• Nie, Y. and X. Wu. (2009) Reliable a priori shortest path problem with limited spatial and temporal dependencies. Proceedings of the 18th International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory, pp 169-196.
• Nie, Y. and X. Wu. (2009) Shortest path problem considering on-time arrival probability. Transportaion Research Part B, 43, 597-613.
• Nie, Y. and H.M. Zhang. (2009) Numerical solution procedures for the morning commute problem. Journal of Mathematical and Computer Modeling, 49, pp. 1295-1310.
• 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 different data coverage: a sensitivity analysis. Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2047, pp. 91-99.
• 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