Dr. Fan’s primary research interests include operations research, transportation network modeling & optimization, traffic operations and simulation, transportation safety and crash analysis, transportation systems planning and demand forecasting, intelligent transportation systems (ITS), and application of advanced econometric methods in transportation, as well as computer software development. Dr. Fan serves as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions – Intelligent Transportation Systems while also serving as a member of three other transportation journal editorial boards. Dr. Fan also serves as a member on the National Science Foundation (NSF) review panel, the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) panel and three Transportation Research Board (TRB) committees. He has been working as an active ad hoc reviewer for more than 20 prestigious journals as well as the national Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) (2010 version). He was selected by the students as the Best Civil Engineering Professor of the Year 2007 at The University of Texas at Tyler and was a proud ASCE Excellence in Civil Engineering Education (ExCEEd) Teaching Fellow in 2007.

Dr. Fan has been and is involved in many sponsored projects (over 10 million dollars in funding), having been principal or co-principal investigator on many research studies for the U. S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), SHRP2 Education Connection, Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT). He is currently working tirelessly on seeking funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) and Charlotte Department of Transportation (Charlotte DOT). He had published more than 80 journal articles, proceeding papers and technical reports on transportation network modeling, transportation systems planning, traffic operations and simulations, traffic safety and crash analysis, pavement M&R project selection optimization, operations research applications in transportation, and ITS. He is a registered professional engineer in Texas.