Profile

Dr. Zheng Xu is a recipient of the 2025 National Natural Science Fund for Excellent Young Scientists Fund Program (Overseas). He received his Bachelor's degree from the School of Traffic and Transportation Engineering at Central South University in 2017, followed by his Master's (2020) and Doctoral (2024) degrees from the Department of Civil Engineering at Monash University, Australia. 

Dr. Xu's research advances the optimization of high-level Automated Driving Systems (ADS) through the combined lenses of artificial intelligence and human–ADS interaction, with human factors engineering serving as a unifying foundation for improving both safety and operational efficiency. His work centers on passenger intervention as a critical yet underexamined dimension of automated mobility, addressing the persistent gap between rapid technological advancement and the cognitive realities of in-vehicle occupants. By reframing this misalignment as a tractable engineering problem, his research contributes to ADS that are simultaneously more efficient, resilient, and sustainable. The methodological foundations developed in this context have also been extended to adjacent emerging domains, including low-altitude transportation and the intelligent operation and maintenance of rail transit systems.

To date, Dr. Xu has thirteen first-author papers in JCR Q1 SCI journals, with the majority appearing in leading transportation venues such as Accident Analysis & Prevention, Transportation Research Part C, and Transportation Research Part D. He has also been recognized through multiple competitive international awards with selection rates between 1% and 15%, most notably as the sole recipient of the 2025 SIDRA Solutions Award for outstanding research in transportation field across Australia and New Zealand.