Vol. 35, No. 4 -October, 2026
IN THIS ISSUE
◐ View the Editor's Message
Dear readers,
Welcome to the October issue of the IEEE ITSS newsletter!
This issue features a variety of updates and highlights. First, we honor the 2026 ITS Society award winners, recognized during the 2026 IEEE ITSC in Naples, Italy. We also share highlights from the conference.
This newsletter includes updates on upcoming conferences and calls. In particular, we would like to draw your attention to the IEEE IV 2027 in Perth, Australia, and the IEEE ITSC 2027 in Boston, USA.
Additionally, we list forthcoming papers to be published in the Society's journals: Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, ITS Magazine, Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, and IEEE Open Journal of ITS as well as the latest episode of the ITS podcast.
We encourage you to submit your calls, announcements and meetings information so that we can share them with the broader ITS community.
Yours,
Photo Credit: Brittany Hosea-Small
◐ View The President's Message
Dear ITSS members,
I would like to brief you of the major strategic goals and initiatives that started since I took over as President in January 2026.
1. Administration and Continuity
We hold weekly meetings with the IEEE Administrator and the Vice President for Administration to maintain continuity across the Society’s activities, events, and meeting plans and to ensure the smooth operation of the ITS Society. The VPs of the Society work and meet with their standing committees on a regular basis to coordinate activities, resolve issues in their respective areas and report during our Officer’s working meetings which are held every few months. In parallel the Past President Ljubo Vlasic is continuing his tremendous efforts to update our governing documents in collaboration with the other Officers of the Society and through consultations with IEEE. This has been a great accomplishment, and we would like to thank Ljubo for his time and diligence in setting the solid foundations for the operation of the Society.
2. Planning and Accountability of Society Activities
We invited all officers, including the Vice Presidents and Past President, to develop plans for activities within their respective areas and to work with their standing and ad hoc committees throughout 2026 to carry them out. We held an in-person meeting, as well as several virtual meetings, to monitor progress, review what had been planned and accomplished, and identify activities to be completed by the end of the year. By year-end, each Vice President will have several planned deliverables to report.
3. Local Chapter Award
We ensured that the Local Chapter Award, proposed while serving as Vice President for Membership which was subsequently approved by the BoG, is submitted by the Awards Committee for the IEEE official approval. The local chapter award is to reward very active chapters who demonstrated excellence in expanding ITS Society’s activities, attracting new members especially students in the field of ITS.
4. New Initiatives in Publications
We proposed two new publication initiatives: an IEEE Transactions on AI in Transportation and an IEEE Transactions on ITS Experiments with Videos . The Vice President for Publications is pursuing these initiatives and we identified two highly qualified ITS Society members to help develop them. The IEEE Transactions on ITS Experiments with Videos represents a completely new concept for IEEE. We discussed the concept with IEEE at the TAB meeting in Nashville, where the response was positive and it was viewed as a potentially important innovation. The Vice President for Publications is working closely with me and some BoG members to move these initiatives forward. The concept for the new journal is to publish papers of approximately 2–4 pages, accompanied by videos demonstrating the experiments and open-source code for any software used. The papers and videos would undergo a peer-review process similar to that of other IEEE publications. We are particularly excited about this initiative because ITS research is fundamentally technology-driven, and videos can provide a highly effective way of communicating experimental results and technological innovations. In many cases, videos can communicate experimental knowledge more effectively than conventional papers.
5. Budgeting and Allocation of Resources
Our weekly meetings led to a new approach to budgeting that emphasizes activities rather than individual requests for small amounts of funding. We observed that at BoG meetings considerable time was devoted to discussing relatively small financial requests instead of focusing on activities, strategic priorities, and new ideas. We therefore proposed allocating an upfront budget to each Vice President based on an estimate of the costs associated with their planned activities and pass the responsibility to the standing committee to approve and fund activities.
6. Education and Professional Development
We worked closely with the Vice President for Education to provide greater structure to and update the Distinguished Lecturer Series, develop new short courses, and expand summer school activities. The Vice President for Education is doing an excellent job moving these initiatives forward while also introducing new ideas and strategies of his own. A lot of good stuff already began to appear in our website in the area of education thanks to the efforts of the VP for education as well as those of the VP for membership due to overlap in certain areas.
7. Collaboration with Other Organizations
We worked with Past President WeiBin Zhang and BoG member James Misener to support collaboration with other organizations, including ITE, a professional organization for transportation professionals founded in 1930. These efforts will expand to organizations such as ITS America and SAE to identify areas of common interest and opportunities for collaboration. These relationships will help increase our interactions with industry and government professionals who share interests with the ITS Society, while broadening the Society’s traditionally strong academic focus to include greater participation from industry and government. Bringing more industry and government professionals into the Society has been one of our longstanding objectives.
8. New Areas: Smart Islands
Smart Islands represents another new area in which we have been working on. We are collaborating with researchers studying the Galápagos Islands, where overpopulation and mobility constraints create significant transportation challenges, as well as with an organization working with remote Greek islands, where populations have been declining because of inadequate connectivity and transportation links to larger islands and the mainland. The challenges faced by these islands create opportunities for new research directions in transportation involving multimodal transportation, connectivity, mobility, and sustainability. We believe that the ITS Society can play an important role in developing innovative transportation solutions for geographically isolated communities.
9. Active Involvement of BoG Members
We have emphasized the importance of active involvement by BoG members in the activities of the Society as an integral part of their responsibilities. Active participation will help members remain better informed about the Society’s activities and enable them to make more informed and responsible decisions when presenting motions and other matters before to the BoG. I would like to congratulate all BoG members as well as our VPs who responded positively in this respect. Most BoG members are already involved in standing committees, and we are currently working to document these roles and responsibilities. The feedback received thus far from several Vice Presidents has been very positive.
We would like to thank everyone with whom I have had the opportunity to work. Without your support and contributions, none of these initiatives could move forward.
We will continue to promote an inclusive approach and encourage people who have the experience, credentials, and, most importantly, the time and willingness to become involved and contribute to the operation and advancement of the ITS Society. We need to expand our activities and increase their number. We encourage everyone to come forward with new ideas for activities and suggestions on how we can do more and do better.
Yours,
Petros Ioannou
President, IEEE ITS Society (2026-2027)
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +1 (310) 408-4899
◐ ITSS Call for Distinguished Lecturer
ITSS Call for Distinguished Lecturer (DL) Nominations
Distinguished Lecturer Program
Distinguished Lecturer Program (DLP) connects Senior IEEE ITSS members, who are renowned intelligent transportation experts, with ITSS Chapters so they can share their knowledge, expertise, and insights into the future of ITS technology. The DLP is aimed at promoting the research areas of the IEEE ITS Society as identified by its Technical Committees.
IEEE ITSS DL Program Nomination Process
The IEEE ITS Society’s would establish an approved list of Distinguish Lecturers (DLs) managed through the IEEE ITSS Education website. The expectation is that an IEEE ITSS DL would be a long standing ITSS member, have a past record of ITSS activity (e.g., conferences, administration, publications), and be able to promote ITSS activities at the lectures. An open call for DLs would be announced and managed through a portal on the website.
Nominate a Distinguished Lecturer
If you know someone who would make an excellent Distinguished Lecturer or if you are interested in becoming one yourself, please click the button below.
◐ ITS Podcast latest episode
ITS Podcast Latest Episode
ITS Podcast Episode 85: Human Behavior, Decision-Making, and Open Science in ITS with Professor Zuduo Zheng
Welcome back to ITS Podcast, episode 85 of October 2026.
In episode 85, host Junyi Ji welcomes Professor Zuduo Zheng from the University of Queensland, Australia, to explore human behavior, decision-making, and open science in intelligent transportation systems (ITS).
Dear Listeners, whether you are a researcher in the Intelligent transportation field or are just interested, don’t hesitate to contact us, we are recruiting volunteers and your help will be highly appreciated.
Contact us on our email at: [email protected]
Survey: Please, share your opinion about our Podcast! It only takes 30 seconds! https://goo.gl/QCXo7Y
YouTube Channel here: https://goo.gl/ZSGolV
This podcast is sponsored by the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society.
◐ IEEE AI Coalition - AI resources at IEEE
Artificial intelligence has applications and impact across all technical fields of interest for practicing engineers, and across all of human society. We aim to bring you IEEE’s AI-related resources and activities into a cohesive platform to ease discovery.
◐ New Special Issue for Transactions on ITS: Risk-Aware Perception and Scene Understanding for Safety-Critical Intelligent Transportation Systems
Risk-Aware Perception and Scene Understanding for Safety-Critical Intelligent Transportation Systems
This Special Issue focuses on perception systems that go beyond detection to explicitly reason about risk in transportation environments. While conventional perception pipelines aim to identify objects and road features, emerging applications require understanding their safety implications. This includes ranking objects and road conditions based on risk, detecting hazardous infrastructure (e.g., potholes, debris), and quantifying uncertainty in perception outputs. The issue covers methods that integrate perception with risk assessment, leveraging multimodal sensing, lightweight models, and real-world constraints, particularly in challenging environments such as rural and unstructured roads where safety risks are often underrepresented.
TOPICS OF INTEREST (but are not limited to)
- Risk-aware perception and scene understanding
- Object and hazard prioritization based on safety risk
- Detection and assessment of road hazards (e.g., potholes, debris, surface degradation)
- Perception under degraded, rural, or unstructured environments
- Uncertainty estimation and confidence-aware perception
- Sensor fusion for safety-critical perception (e.g. camera, LiDAR, GNSS, V2X)
- Lightweight and deployable perception models for real-world ITS
- Validation and verification of perception systems for safety
- Benchmarking and metrics for risk-aware perception
- Out-of-Distribution Robustness and Uncertainty-Aware decision-making
- Causal and Explainable Decision-Making architectures for autonomous vehicle systems
- Integration of perception with decision-making and control systems
- Standardization and harmonization
SPECIAL ISSUE TIMELINES
- First submission deadline: 31 December 2026
- Notification of first decision: 31 March 2027
- First revision submission deadline: 31 May 2027
- Notification of final decision: 30 September 2027
- Final manuscript (camera ready) submission deadline: 31 October 2027
- Issue of Publication: 31 December 2027
GUEST EDITORIAL TEAM
Meng Lu, Aeolix ITS, The Netherlands
Stephany Berrio Perez, University of Queensland, Australia
Lingxi Li, Purdue University, USA
Chen Wang, Southeast University, P.R. China
Abdulla Al-Kaff, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
Alexander Carballo, Graduate School of Engineering, Gifu University, Japan
◐ Call for Interest: Transportation Evaluations & Datasets
◐ 2026 ITSS Awards winners
The 2026 ITSS Awards Round
The 2026 IEEE ITS Society Awards were announced during the 29th Annual IEEE ITS Conference held in Naples, Italy, on 16 September 2026. The ITSS Awards Standing Committee expresses its appreciation to award nominators for their effort towards submitting 50+ outstanding award nominations.
The 2026 IEEE ITS Lifetime Achievement Award
The 2026 IEEE ITS Lifetime Achievement Award
Charles Herget
USA
“For sustained and distinguished leadership in establishing the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) community and enabling foundational ITS communications standards through multi-society collaboration and standards coordination.”
The 2026 IEEE ITS Institutional Lead Award
Arnaud de La Fortelle and his Leadership Teams at École des Mines de Paris – PSL University and Heex Technologies, France, Brigitte d'Andrea-Novel, Fabien Moutarde, Arthur Gaudron, Sascha Hornauer and Matthieu Carré c/o Arnaud de La Fortelle École des Mines de Paris – PSL University France
“For contributions to cooperative intelligent transportation systems, from theoretical foundations to real-world deployment across four continents”
The 2026 IEEE Outstanding ITS Application Award
Andreas Malikopoulos
Cornell University
USA
“For pioneering and commercially deployed decentralized control technologies that improve the energy efficiency and sustainability of connected and automated vehicles.”
The 2026 IEEE Outstanding ITS Research Award
Christos G Cassandras
Boston University
USA
“For Contributions to Optimal and Safe Control of Connected Automated Vehicles in Intelligent Transportation Systems”
The 2026 IEEE ITSS Young Researcher/Engineer Award
Chen Lyu
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore
“For contributions to human-like prediction and decision-making in autonomous driving, foundation-model-enabled reasoning and human-centric co-design for safe intelligent transportation systems.”
The 2026 IEEE ITSS Best Dissertation Award – The 1st Place
Zirui Li
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore
“Interactive Motion Planning Method of Automated Vehicles based on Spatiotemporal Risk Continual Learning”
The 2026 IEEE ITSS Best Dissertation Award – The 2nd Place
Viet-Anh Le
University of Pennsylvania
USA
“Mixed Traffic Control And Coordination: Optimization And Learning-Based Approaches”
The 2026 IEEE ITSS Best Dissertation Award – The 3rd Place
Can Cui
Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence, Sunnyvale, CA
USA
“Foundation Models For Human-Autonomy Teaming In Autonomous Vehicles”
Yiru Jiao
Delft University of Technology
The Netherlands
“Proactive Collision Risk Quantification in Multi-directional Traffic Interactions”
◐ 2026 ITSC Highlights
IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC 2026)
The 29th edition of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference (ITSC) was held in Naples, Italy, from 15 to 18 September 2026. ITSC 2026 has marked a historic milestone: for the first time since the conference series was established, the flagship conference of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society was held in Italy.
IEEE ITSC 2026 took place at the Convention Bureau Stazione Marittima, whose conference facilities are located in two adjacent buildings: the Stazione Marittima Building and the Parthenope Building. Technical sessions and conference activities were held across both buildings, connected within the same venue.
IEEE ITSC 2026 welcomed 1,127 registered participants, of whom 37% were from the Asia-Pacific region, 46% from Europe, and the remaining 17% from the United States and other regions of the world.
Technical Program
The initial submissions for ITSC2026 comprised regular papers and invited-session papers, all of which underwent a rigorous double-blind peer-review process conducted by a Technical Program Committee consisting of 282 Associate Editors and 3,570 reviewers. The acceptance rate for regular and invited session papers has been lower than 50%. Industry Track papers presenting industrial contributions were submitted during a subsequent phase, as well as presentations of journal papers and late breaking results in the form of posters.
The Technical Program featured 831 presentations across 147 oral sessions, comprising regular sessions and 26 invited special sessions. In addition, three poster sessions featured 36 contributions. For the first time at ITSC, Industry Track papers were presented alongside academic contributions in both regular and invited sessions.
Moreover, the Technical Program included 28 workshops, 6 tutorial sessions, 3 live demos demonstrating ITS technologies, and the ITSC2026 hackathon, in which multidisciplinary teams tackled a smart mobility data challenge through creativity and innovation.
Four plenary lectures, given by Shengbo Eben Li, Antonella Ferrara, Christian Merkt, Alberto Broggi and Pier Paolo Porta, enriched the ITSC2026 technical program.
Opening Session
The IEEE ITSC 2026 General Chair, Prof. Stefania Santini, opened the session by welcoming the participants also on behalf of the local institutions. Sergio Repetto, Head of Systems Development and Research and Development at RFI, Italy’s national railway infrastructure manager, then presented the company’s research directions. The Program Chair, Prof. Simona Sacone, introduced the technical program, after which the President of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society, Prof. Petros Ioannou, delivered the official opening address.
Social Program
The two major events of the ITSC2026 Social program were the Welcome Reception and the Gala Dinner.
The IEEE ITSC 2026 Welcome Reception was held in the magnificent Royal Palace of Naples (Palazzo Reale), one of the city’s most iconic landmarks and a symbol of its rich historical and cultural heritage.
The evening included an exclusive guided tour of the Royal Palace, allowing participants to discover its magnificent ceremonial halls, priceless works of art, refined furnishings, and remarkable architectural details. Following the guided visit, guests gathered for the Welcome Reception, enjoying a selection of Italian specialties, accompanied by local wines and refreshments, offering a true taste of the region’s renowned culinary tradition.
The IEEE ITSC 2026 Gala Dinner took place at Nabilah, an elegant seaside venue located along the coast of Bacoli, in the heart of the Phlegraean Fields.
The evening featured a refined culinary experience inspired by the flavors of Campania, showcasing fresh local ingredients, regional specialties, and the renowned hospitality of Southern Italy. Throughout the evening, participants enjoyed a performance by the Scialapopolo, a traditional Neapolitan folk ensemble whose vibrant music and engaging performances celebrate the cultural heritage and festive spirit of Naples.
Two other important events were the IEEE Young Professionals (YP) and Women in Engineering (WIE) “Night with a Coach,” during which young professionals and senior members enjoyed a guided tour of the city centre followed by dinner, and the Conference Farewell Session, which included the presentation of the conference awards.
Conference Awards
The paper award process was managed by the Program Chair together with an Award Committee composed of five volunteers covering different regions and with diverse backgrounds and expertise in Intelligent Transportation Systems.
By considering the evaluations received in the review process, 12 papers were selected as candidates for the Best Paper Award and 12 papers as candidates for the Best Student Paper Award (with the corresponding author being a student). Then, the award committee evaluated the shortlisted papers, attended the presentations, and selected the following award recipients:
Best Paper Awards
The 1st Prize: Suresh Purini
for the paper co-authored with Archit Narwadkar, Deepak Gangadharan, entitled “From GPU to Microcontroller: Online Ridge Regression for Edge-Deployable Traffic Prediction”
The 2nd Prize: Toshiya Kitahara
for the paper co-authored with Ryu Shirakami, Koh Takeuchi, Hisashi Kashima, entitled “CASTANET: Causality-Aware Spatio-Temporal Adversarial Network Using Traffic Incident Effects”
Alberto Petrillo, ITSC2026 General Co-Chair, and the Award Recipient Suresh Purini
Best Student Paper Awards
1st Prize: Riccardo Vianello
for the paper co-authored with Matteo Pierini, Matteo Corno, Sergio M. Savaresi, entitled “Jerk-Constrained Speed Profile Generation for Autonomous Racing”
2nd Prize: Till Beemelmanns
for the paper co-authored with Shayan Sharifi, Manas Mehrotra, Ayushman Choudhuri, Lutz Eckstein, entitled “Towards Trustworthy and Explainable AI for Perception Models: From Concept to Prototype Vehicle Deployment”
Silvia Siri, ITSC2026 Publication Chair, and the Award Recipient Riccardo Vianello
The Conference also recognized:
- The exceptional dedication, high-quality, reviews, and consistent support of the peer-review process by awarding Mohammad Khoshkdahan, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, with the Outstanding Reviewer Award; and
- Outstanding editorial contributions and sustained service to the IEEE ITSC community by awarding Alberto Petrillo, University of Naples Federico II, Italy, with the Outstanding Associate Editor Award.
Cecilia Pasquale, ITSC2026 Workshop Chair, and the Outstanding Reviewer Award Recipient Mohammad Khoshkdahan
Finally, the winners of the ITSC2026 Hackathon were the following:
1st Prize: Team “Mi3 UC MERCED”
composed of Angel Martinez-Sanchez, Marcus Blennemann, Ross Greer, Wesley Maia, and Yash Tandon
2nd Prize: Team “ITL”
composed of Moritz Vocht
3rd Prize: Team “Wayne and Claude”
composed of Kangwon Lee
Bianca Caiazzo, ITSC2026 Registration Chair, and the Award Recipient Team “Mi3 UC MERCED”
Financial Sponsorship
A generous financial support was received from a number of corporate sponsors, which enabled a high-quality delivery of ITSC 2026 and all its milestones.
ITSC2027
The next edition of the ITSC series will be held in Boston, USA, on 21-24 September 2027.
We look forward to meeting you there.
See you in Boston!!
The ITSC 2026 General Chair – Stefania Santini
The ITSC 2026 Program Chair – Simona Sacone
Officers
President: Petros Ioannou, University of Southern California, United States
Past President: Lujbo Vlacic, Griffith University, Australia
VP Admin Activities: Yaobin Chen, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis(IUPUI), USA
VP of Conference Activities: Ahmed Hussein, IAV GmbH, Germany
VP Educational Activities: Xiaopeng Li, University of South Florida, United States
VP Financial Activities: Lingxi Li , Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA
VP Membership Activities: Maryam Kaveshgar,Ahmedabad University, India
VP Publications Activities: Yisheng Lv, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Science, China
VP Technical Activities: Nobuyuki Ozaki, Nagoya University, Japan
VP Standards Activities: Meng Lu, Aeolix ITS., Netherlands
Publication Editors
Transactions on ITS Editor-in-Chief: Simona Sacone, University of Genova, USA
Transactions on IV Editor-in-Chief: Edward (Eddie) Tunstel, R&D Robotics Department, Southwest Research Institute, USA
ITS Open Access Journal Editor-in-Chief: Jiaqi Ma, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
ITS Magazine Editor-in-Chief: Yisheng Lv, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Newsletter Editor: Maria Laura Delle Monache, University of California, Berkeley, USA
ITS Podcast Editor: Maryam Kaveshgar, Ahmedabad University, India
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Information for Contributors
Announcements, feature articles, book and meetings reviews, opinions, letters to the editor, professional activities, abstracts of reports, and other material of interest to the ITS community are solicited. Please submit electronic material for consideration in any of the following formats: Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, plain ASCII, rich text format (rtf), or portable document format (pdf).
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact: [email protected]
Vol. 35, No. 4 - October 2026 Editor: Maria Laura Delle Monache - [email protected]
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