Dr. Zhengtian Xu has received the 2021 Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies (HKSTS) Outstanding Dissertation Award cum Gordon Newell Memorial Prize for his dissertation, On the Empty Miles of Ride-Sourcing Services: Theory, Observation and Countermeasures, completed at the University of Michigan in 2020.
In his dissertation, Dr. Xu investigated the formation and consequences of empty miles produced by ride-sourcing services and proposed countermeasures to bolster system performance. He has been invited to present a talk at the 25th International Conference of the HKSTS, to be held in December 2021 in Hong Kong. HKSTS established the Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2005 to promote transportation research and education in Asia. The Gordon Newell Memorial Prize is dedicated to the late Professor Gordon Newell of the University of California at Berkeley in recognition of his significant contributions to scientific research and education in traffic and transportation theories.