Professor Yanfeng Ouyang has been named the George Krambles Endowed Professor in Rail and Public Transit. The endowed professorship was established in 2001 to support a faculty member who is “an outstanding, internationally recognized individual, whose teaching and research advance engineering practices and develop new technologies vital to the transportation industry.”
Ouyang has been on the faculty at CEE at Illinois since 2005, where he teaches undergraduate courses in systems engineering and economics, transportation engineering, and public transportation systems, as well as a graduate course on logistics systems. His research focuses on developing models and solution methods for problems in the areas of transportation systems, infrastructure management activities and sustainability, network optimization and logistics systems planning.
The George Krambles Endowed Professorship was established in honor of George Krambles, a 1936 graduate of the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Krambles spent the majority of his career at the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), where he eventually became Executive Director. To support students interested in the transportation field, he established the George Krambles Transit Scholarship Fund, which provided assistance to many students who would go on to become industry leaders. After his death in 1999, Krambles’ estate bequeathed a substantial amount to the Scholarship Fund; the Fund’s Board of Directors in turn created the endowed professorship “as a testament to his energy, dedication, and commitment to the future of the industry.”
“I am really honored to be associated with Mr. George Krambles, who is one of the most prominent figures in the history of the U.S. public transit industry,” said Ouyang. “My work on public transportation and railroad systems engineering addresses some of the challenges to which Mr. Krambles dedicated his entire career, such as those related to mobility, resilience, sustainability and safety. I am very fortunate to be able to work on these important problems in a very stimulating, collegial and supportive environment here in CEE.”
A formal investiture ceremony will be held for Ouyang during the next academic year.