Raphael Stern

Short CV

Raphael Stern is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Prior to joining UMN, Raphael was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Informatics at the Technical University of Munich and a visiting scholar at Vanderbilt University’s Institute for Software Integrated Systems. Raphael received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Raphael is a recipient of the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship from the Federal Highway Administration, as well as the National Science Foundation's CAREER Award. Raphael’s research interests focus around transportation system modeling and control, and the integration of data to improve the management of transportation systems.

Selected Awards

• 2025, National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award
• 2022, American Society of Civil Engineers Minnesota Chapter Young Engineer of the Year Award
• 2021, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies Best Paper Award

Research Interests

Control theory; Dynamical systems; Regression analysis; Spatial data analysis; Supervised learning; Unsupervised learning; Traffic Modeling and Control; Traffic flow modeling; Dynamical model stability analysis; Modeling electric vehicle dynamics; Microscopic traffic modeling; Traffic model calibration; Traffic control; Automated vehicle control; Adaptive cruise control impacts on traffic flow; Transportation Data Analysis: Spatial transportation data analysis; Transportation systems analysis; Machine learning for transportation data; Transportation cybersecurity; Modeling wildlife-human interface for transportation; Pedestrian behavior and safety

Selected Publications

• Stern, Raphael E., et al. "Dissipation of stop-and-go waves via control of autonomous vehicles: Field experiments." Transportation research part C: emerging technologies 89 (2018): 205-221.
• Stern, Raphael E., et al. "Quantifying air quality benefits resulting from few autonomous vehicles stabilizing traffic." Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment 67 (2019): 351-365.
• Shang, Mingfeng, and Raphael E. Stern. "Impacts of commercially available adaptive cruise control vehicles on highway stability and throughput." Transportation research part C: emerging technologies 122 (2021): 102897.
• Stern, Raphael E., Junho Song, and Daniel B. Work. "Accelerated Monte Carlo system reliability analysis through machine-learning-based surrogate models of network connectivity." Reliability Engineering & System Safety 164 (2017): 1-9.
• Wang, Shian, Raphael Stern, and Michael W. Levin. "Optimal control of autonomous vehicles for traffic smoothing." IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems 23.4 (2021): 3842-3852.
• Shang, Mingfeng, Benjamin Rosenblad, and Raphael Stern. "A novel asymmetric car following model for driver-assist enabled vehicle dynamics." IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems 23.9 (2022): 15696-15706.