PhD Spotlight: Joseph Rodriguez, PhD’25, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Joseph Rodriguez, PhD’25, civil and environmental engineering, conducted research funded by the Department of Energy on developing AI-based control strategies to improve transit reliability and efficiency. The proposed strategies and technologies have the potential to transform how frontline transit staff deliver service.
Joseph Rodriguez, PhD’25, civil and environmental engineering, began his PhD at Northeastern in 2021, advised by Haris Koutsopoulos, professor of civil and environmental engineering. His research, funded by the Department of Energy, focuses on developing AI-based control strategies to improve transit reliability and efficiency. The proposed strategies and technologies have the potential to transform how frontline transit staff deliver service, enhancing the experience for transit riders and drivers. Rodriguez deployed his research via multiple pilots on bus and rail operations in Chicago, demonstrating reduced rider wait times, more consistent driver break times, and more efficient fleet utilization.
His research has been published in Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, titled “Cooperative Bus Holding and Stop-Skipping: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Framework” and in Smart Cities, titled “Robust Reinforcement Learning Strategies With Evolving Curriculum for Efficient Bus Operations in Smart Cities.” Peer-reviewed papers on his research have been presented at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in 2022, 2023, and 2025; the World Conference in Transportation Research in 2023; and the Transit Data Conference in 2024. Rodriguez has also given talks for academic audiences, including a guest lecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on “AI Applications to Transit,” as well as for practitioners, including two workshops at a consortium of the largest U.S. agencies.
Rodriguez’s work has been recognized with several awards at Northeastern, including best presentation in the Departmental Research Expo in 2022 and the PhD Experiential Award in 2025. He also held internships at the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) to work on reliability improvements, and at the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (NYMTA) to improve bus arrival predictions for riders. In addition to his role as a researcher at the MIT-NEU Transit Lab, Rodriguez volunteers as the lab’s social media manager to circulate impactful transit and mobility research.