Chicago, Illinois, United States
Louis Sungwoo Cho is an Intelligent Transportation Systems Consultant for Chicago Department of Transportation and Alrek Business Solutions (Parsons' Subcontractor). He has both M.S. and a B.S. Honors in Civil Engineering, along with a Minor in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. With over three years of research experience in autonomous vehicle technologies and more than three years of leadership within ITE@UIUC, Louis is dedicated to advancing smart mobility. His work focuses on integrating emerging technologies to build safer, more efficient, and future-ready transportation systems.
Led cross-functional coordination of multiple City of Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and traffic operations projects, managing schedules, deliverables, and stakeholder communication across internal teams, vendors, and consultants. Monitored ITS device and corridor performance via Advanced Traffic Management System, Chicago Traffic Tracker, and Miovision cameras, flagging issues and driving resolutions to maintain operational continuity. Analyzed traffic volume data across congested city corridors, identifying patterns and trends to support informed traffic operations and planning. Diagnosed and resolved traffic volume discrepancies between Miovision and R-Shiny dashboards with Parsons engineers, enhancing data reliability across reporting systems. Partnered with the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) to advance Transit Signal Priority (TSP) projects, aligning bus operational requirements and managing procurement workflows. Prepared and cleaned signal timing datasets to ensure accuracy and integrity, supporting optimized traffic signal performance across CDOT corridors. Audited CDOT traffic database servers to surface and resolve discrepancies across data sources, strengthening data integrity using SQL.
Supporting CDOT through Alrek Business Solutions (Parsons Subcontractor), and coordinating cross-functional ITS projects and provide technical support, reporting, and stakeholder communication across CDOT teams and external vendors.
Calibrated control spacing models for autonomous vehicles using a genetic algorithm to optimize performance across various traffic scenarios, and demonstrated that parameters must adapt dynamically to ensure stability Deployed planning and control algorithms on a physical autonomous vehicle using ROS; analyzed real-time vehicle dynamics at Illinois Center for Transportation to validate trajectory tracking control responsiveness. Conducted comparative behavioral analysis using the Phoenix Robotaxi Open Dataset to identify discrepancies in lane-change and car-following behaviors between human and autonomous drivers
Organized informal gatherings and meetings with undergraduate and graduate students for networking opportunities. Mentored prospective undergraduate students who are interested in graduate school. Assisted with the ITE@UIUC HSR project team with planning and presentation.
Lead professional development events by coordinating seminars and panel discussions with industry leaders in CAVs and ITS; increased student participation by 60 % and built partnerships with national ITE chapters. Directed a transit analytics project leveraging machine learning to assess bus ridership trends; identified capacity gaps and presented results at UIUC Engineering Open House, earning a Top 3 Award out of 200+ projects. Advocated for diversity in STEM as the ITE@UIUC representative to the Engineering Council, supporting K–12 robotics outreach and organizing major networking events with UIUC engineering leadership.
Experimented a trajectory re-identification pipeline incorporating convolutional social pooling to improve vehicle detection accuracy in low-visibility scenarios.