Yinan Zheng is a third year Ph.D. student in UF’s transportation program. She was always interested in engineering, as both her parents were engineers. She completed her undergraduate degree in civil engineering in China, but wasn’t sure what her focus would be. She did know one thing – she wanted to learn from a particular professor whom she highly revered: Dr. Lily Elefteriadou, professor and director of the UFTI. And, with UF being a top-ranked engineering school, she was Gainesville-bound.

“Dr. Lily is so knowledgeable,” Zheng said. “When I talk with her about my own research, she has lots of ideas on what I need. If she sees my ideas as not easy to use in reality, she give ideas on how to switch it. That is the beauty of experience.”

On transportation engineering, Zheng enjoys being able to design roads and evaluate traffic, but has only thought of it in terms of the vehicle’s movement. As a research graduate student under faculty adviser Dr. Elefteriadou, her first research project introduced her to other aspects of transportation, particularly pedestrian/vehicle interactions. She has since worked on other projects through her years here at UF, but pedestrian safety has stayed with her. Zheng is especially interested in pedestrian interactions with connected vehicles.

“Connected vehicle technologies is the future of transportation,” Zhang said. “Connected vehicles will impact pedestrians, and I would like to make a more safe or efficient way for them to interact together.”

Many opportunities have been afforded to Zhang through UFTI, which she is taking full advantage. Through Dr. Elefteriadou’s professional connections, she has also been able to network with other transportation professionals at conferences and meetings.

“Yinan is an absolute pleasure to work with,” Dr. Elefteriadou said. “I have been impressed with her ability to take initiative and solve problems in her research.  She is not only very intelligent and hardworking, but she doesn’t hesitate to volunteer when needed, whether for ITE or WTS, or for assisting other students with their research.”

As a member and webmaster of WTS, Zheng loves to show kids at K-12 events that women and minorities can succeed at engineering. Zhang has won several awards while at UF, and more recently, she was the recipient of the WTS 2015 Helene M. Overly Memorial Graduate Scholarship, awarded to her by the Central Florida WTS professional chapter in Orlando, Fla. Zheng also hopes to teach next year to find out if that is where her heart leads. This summer, she will be an intern with Kittelson & Associates.

“No matter which field you’re in, transportation is a way of solving problems in the real world, and that is very fulfilling,” Zheng said. “When you enter transportation, learn from other departments, such as statistics, computer science, industrial engineering. All of them correlate.”

Zheng will graduate Summer 2016.