Xilei Zhao

University of Florida

Contact Info
xilei.zhao@essie.ufl.edu

Xilei Zhao is an assistant professor in Civil and Coastal Engineering at the University of Florida, where she leads the Smart, Equitable, Resilient Mobility Systems (SERMOS) Lab. She received her master's in applied mathematics and statistics and a PhD in civil engineering from the Johns Hopkins University in 2017. Zhao was a research fellow in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan from 2017 to 2018. From 2018 to 2019, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. 

Zhao's work focuses on developing and applying data and computational science methods to tackle challenging problems in resilience and transportation. She specializes in big data analytics and evacuation behavior modeling for wildfires and hurricanes, quantifying resilience for critical infrastructure systems, societal systems, communities, and modeling and planning for emerging travel modes (e.g., ridesourcing and micromobility). Zhao's research has been supported by multiple funding agencies, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Florida Sea Grant, and the Natural Hazards Center.