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This group is interested in sustainable integrated urban systems focusing on transportation and energy. Our research focuses on designing, planning, and operational decisions of integrated civil engineering systems with low environmental impacts and considers human behavior and decision-making. We have focused on smart charging electric vehicles, electric charging infrastructure needs, and on-demand shared mobility services. The team employs optimization, simulation, statistical modeling, semi-structured interviews, and content analysis.
Key Research Areas
Electrified Transportation
We study innovative charging infrastructure solutions, access and equity concerns, and smart charging of electric vehicles to provide power grid benefits.
Shared Mobility
We study the (fleet) operations of shared mobility, including automated vehicles and micromobilityat the regional levelusing an integrated optimization-simulation framework.
Other Topics
We also study travel demand under normal and shock events, technology adoption, and active transportation-physical activity benefits.
Dr. Dean is recruiting 1-2 highly motivated students for fall 2025 to conduct innovative, high-quality research on sustainable transportation and energy systems, like shared autonomous vehicles, electric mobility systems, charging stations, and vehicle-grid integration. The student will be part of the Sustainable Transportation & Evolving Energy …
Please consider submitting your research paper to Transportation Research Part A's Special Issue on Urban Mobility Electrification. More details are in the attached flyer. TRA Special Issue_Urban Mobility ElectrificationDownload
Professors Dean and Ma Our research team was one of 18 new UCI-UCLA collaborations started between faculty at the two engineering schools that received funding from the Samueli Foundation. Dr. Dean (UCI) and Associate Professor Jiaqi Ma (UCLA) received money to look at sustainable mobility and equitable access …
Dr. Dean spoke with Mark Brodie, co-host of KJZZ's The Show, to talk about Buzze, a Phoenix-based start-up that connects EV owners with residential Level 2 chargers with EV drivers in need of a place to plug in. This app is a new form of peer-to-peer …
Interested in learning more about our lab's research? Check out this UCI Samueli School of Engineering intro video to learn more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wRogEVglK0
Our research group received funding from the State of California’s one-time allocation in the 2021 State Budget for the Resilient and Innovative Mobility Initiative (RIMI) to conduct research on the role of turnkey EV charging infrastructure in our state. Role of Charging as a Service in …
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