Source: CEE

Pre­doc­tor­al CEE stu­dents, Sam­pur­na Dat­ta, Da Li, Nicole Rock­ey, Shil­va Shrestha and Zhengt­ian Xu, have received Rack­ham Pre­doc­tor­al Fel­low­ships from the Rack­ham Grad­u­ate School.

The Rack­ham Pre­doc­tor­al Fel­low­ship sup­ports out­stand­ing doc­tor­al stu­dents who have achieved can­di­da­cy and are active­ly work­ing on dis­ser­ta­tion research and writ­ing. The pro­gram seeks to sup­port stu­dents work­ing on dis­ser­ta­tions that are unusu­al­ly cre­ative, ambi­tious and impact­ful. These fel­low­ships are for three terms of full sup­port to PhD stu­dents in their final phase of dis­ser­ta­tion writ­ing and research. Fel­low­ships include a stipend and cov­ered can­di­da­cy tuition and required fees for twelve months.

Xu’s research focus­es on the pro­lif­er­a­tion of smart­phones. Smart­phones have cat­alyzed rapid growth of ride-sourc­ing ser­vices, such as Uber, Lyft and Didi Chux­ing. Such on-demand e‑hailing ser­vices sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the meet­ing fric­tions between dri­vers and rid­ers and endow the plat­form with unprece­dent­ed flex­i­bil­i­ties and chal­lenges in sys­tem man­age­ment. Xu con­tributes to the ongo­ing quest of mod­el­ing, exam­in­ing and man­ag­ing the ride-sourc­ing ser­vices by con­cen­trat­ing on the sup­ply state of the sys­tem. He aims to study the under­ly­ing physics behind the ser­vice oper­a­tions, to under­stand the sys­tem behav­iors under dif­fer­ent strate­gies and poli­cies, and to tar­get the issues that can poten­tial­ly under­mine the sys­tem sup­ply. Var­i­ous con­trol strate­gies are fur­ther pro­posed to guide and strength­en the sup­ply man­age­ment for ride-sourc­ing ser­vices in prac­tice. Xu is advised by Pro­fes­sor Yafeng Yin.

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