Team
An interdisciplinary team developing innovative and practical technologies for safer, smarter, and more efficient transportation.
UW STAR Lab
The Smart Transportation Applications and Research Laboratory (STAR Lab) brings together researchers from diverse academic and technical backgrounds, including transportation engineering, computer science, software engineering, mechanical and automotive engineering, automation, artificial intelligence, and related fields.
This interdisciplinary environment enables the team to approach transportation challenges from multiple perspectives and integrate advances in artificial intelligence, sensing, edge computing, automation, connected transportation, and data science.
STAR Lab research is driven by real-world transportation challenges. The STAR Lab team works very closely with transportation agencies, nonprofit organizations, communities, and industry partners to identify important problems and develop cutting-edge, practical, and cost-effective solutions. The goal is to move research beyond algorithms and laboratory demonstrations to field-tested technologies that improve transportation safety, mobility, efficiency, and infrastructure management.
Leadership
Founding Director & Professor
Thomas and Marilyn Nielsen Endowed Professor in Engineering, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Washington.
Artificial intelligence, intelligent infrastructure, traffic sensing, edge computing, transportation safety, traffic operations, connected and automated transportation, and smart mobility.
Associate Director & Research Associate Professor
Director, Master of Sustainable Transportation Program, University of Washington.
Researchers
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Traffic video data analytics, transportation safety, crash anticipation, deep learning, vision-language models, and autonomous vehicles.
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Urban computing, sustainable computing, and autonomous driving.
Graduate Researchers
Big data analytics, computer vision, and software development.
Shared mobility and urban planning.
Transportation safety, autonomous transportation systems, and multimodal movement.
Intelligent transportation systems, rural roads, and safety.
Remote sensing, intelligent transportation systems, and mitigation and inventory of transportation greenhouse-gas emissions.
Connected and automated vehicles, computer vision, and cyber-physical systems.
Intelligent transportation systems, road safety, urban mobility, and traffic infrastructure innovation.
Computer vision, large language models, and big data analytics.
Computer vision, autonomous driving, machine learning, intelligent transportation systems, and edge computing.
Traffic sensors, pavement, and airport transportation.
Graduate Researchers
Active transportation, micromobility, freight, and logistics.
Traffic safety, causal discovery, and traffic sensors.
Intelligent transportation systems and big data analysis in transportation safety.
Intelligent transportation systems, traffic operations, and highway design.
Air transportation and unmanned aerial vehicles.
How the Team Works
STAR Lab researchers bring together expertise from transportation engineering, computer science, software engineering, mechanical and automotive engineering, automation, artificial intelligence, sensing, and data science.
This combination of backgrounds allows the team to work across the complete research and technology-development process—from identifying real transportation problems and collecting data to developing algorithms, building hardware and software systems, conducting field experiments, and supporting deployment.
Working with transportation agencies, nonprofit organizations, communities, and industry partners keeps STAR Lab research grounded in real-world needs and helps ensure that new technologies are not only innovative, but also practical, scalable, and cost-effective.
STAR Lab Community
Over the years, STAR Lab has trained a large community of researchers and transportation professionals who have continued their careers in universities, public agencies, consulting firms, technology companies, research organizations, and entrepreneurial ventures around the world.