When Xinhao Liu first joined the RailTEC program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign six years ago, he had little knowledge of railroad operations but had a desire to solve real-world issues. Now well on his way to earning a PhD, Liu plans to write his dissertation paper on Longer Train Derailment Risk Analysis. “My life after joining RailTEC has been a different life,” he said. “It’s the reason I stayed here for my master’s and PhD.”
As a high school student in Xi’an Shaanxi, China, Liu initially was interested in environmental science and knew Illinois had a good environmental science program. “UIUC was my dream school,” he said. But after arriving on campus in 2017 and taking an introduction to environmental engineering class, Liu discovered he was interested in a major that involved more math and science rather than chemistry, so he transferred to civil engineering.
In one of his civil engineering classes – Engineering Economics – the final project entailed designing a parking lot that would allow people to enter and depart the State Farm Center in 15 minutes. That’s when Liu had an a-ha moment. “I recognized my interest as a transportation issue, not an environmental issue,” he said.
During spring semester 2019 as an undergraduate sophomore, Liu attended an engineering research fair and learned about RailTEC. “I became interested in rail safety because I can use the majority of my skills in math and statistics,” he said. “I can learn about railroads and real-world problems and use my statistics and programming skills to solve real-world problems.”
Liu joined the RailTEC program in March 2019 and has been an active participant since. During his junior year as an undergraduate he worked on a tank car placement research project. “It was a huge advantage to join as an underclassman,” he said. “It helped me develop research and soft skills, such as how to communicate, and provided me with leadership opportunities.”
Liu praised Professors Chris Barkan and Chen-Yu Lin for their teaching style which encourages students to discover a problem and find the solution using resources and data sources. “It teaches proactive learning; it is research which is not like solving a homework problem,” Liu said. “They are my mentors. They have been very helpful and given me personal development help.”
Liu still remembers an assignment he tackled as an undergraduate junior. “They (Barkan and Lin) gave me a task – a published academic paper – and asked me to replicate the paper. The paper presented a model, and they asked me to understand the model and build a tool using that model for their internal use,” he recalled. “Back then, I had very little programming knowledge, and I spent all winter break understanding the model and creating it,” he said. “It was a big challenge. I had to understand the technical paper, learn how to program in Excel VBA and build a replica of the result.”
Liu started pursuing a PhD in civil engineering in the fall of 2023 after earning a master’s degree in civil engineering in May 2023 and a master’s degree in applied statistics in May 2024. He graduated in 2021 with two bachelor’s degrees in economics and in civil engineering. Since 2021, Liu has been learning AI tools and continues to hone his skills and field knowledge to apply to the rail industry.
“This is what I’ve been trying to do since joining RailTEC – solve transportation issues using analytical skills,” he said. “Railroads are a delicate system, and people in railroad academia from different backgrounds are all working toward making railroads better. There is a lot of railroad data coming in, but we have to develop the techniques so industry can use it,” he said.
When Liu receives his PhD, he does not plan to work in academia. “I want to work in the industry,” he said. “I want to be a data scientist in the transportation engineering field.”