Hao (Frank) Yang is an assistant research professor in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering. His innovative research centers around developing trustworthy machine learning and data science methods to improve the equity, safety, resiliency, and sustainability of urban systems, especially in transportation and public health. This includes developing new sensors and data-driven perception methodologies, creating ethical and trustworthy machine-learning methods, and building human-machine cooperative traffic systems.
Yang is an active member of several standing committees within the Transportation Research Board and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Transportation & Development Institute’s AI committee. His achievements include receiving the Michael Kyte Outstanding Student of the Year Award from the U.S. Department of Transportation in 2022, the 2022 High-Value Research Award from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the Best Paper Award from the Transportation Research Board Information Systems and Technology Committee (AED30) in 2023, and both the Best and Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Chinese Overseas Transportation Association (COTA) and the Transportation Research Board in 2024.
Prior to Yang’s appointment at Johns Hopkins University, he worked as a research scientist at the National Science Foundation (NSF) AI Institute for Edge Computing Leveraging Next Generation Networks and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University. He obtained bachelor’s degrees in electrical and computer (telecommunication) engineering from both the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and the University of London. He completed his PhD in civil and environmental engineering (transportation) at the University of Washington.