Professor Christos Cassandras Wins 2026 IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society Outstanding Research Award
Imagine a world where morning traffic completely disappears, intersection lights are obsolete, and your car pays you a small digital incentive for letting someone merge.
It sounds impossible, but CISE Faculty Affiliate and Head of the Division of Systems Engineering Professor Christos Cassandras (ECE, SE) is building that reality, and the engineering community is taking notice.
Cassandras was recently named the recipient of the prestigious 2026 IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS) Outstanding Research Award.
The honor recognizes Cassandras’ groundbreaking contributions to the field of smart cities and automated traffic management. The award comes on the heels of a high-profile feature in Nature, where Cassandras detailed his vision for rewriting how the world drives.
“In some circles, this is considered science fiction, but in most technology-aware circles, it’s very real, it’s coming,” Cassandras said. “The hype will never deliver the absolute dream, but it will deliver something that is going to make the world a better place.”
For decades, urban commuting has been defined by what Cassandras calls “selfish driving,” a system where individual drivers make competitive choices based entirely on personal convenience. This eventually leads to gridlock, wasted fuel, and accidents.
Cassandras is pioneering a shift toward “social optimality.”
His research focuses on Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) to transform standard roadways into fully integrated networks.
Unlike some autonomous vehicles that currently operate in isolation using only onboard sensors, Cassandras’ model employs CAVs that actively “talk” to one another and to urban infrastructure, such as traffic lights.
By sharing real-time data on position, velocity, and destination, the network can optimize routing and speed across an entire area.
“It doesn’t take that many, maybe 10 or 20% [of autonomous vehicles] on the road, but they can act as virtual traffic cops,” Cassandras added. “For example, by adjusting their speeds the way that is socially optimal, they can force the human drivers to behave the same way.”
Cassandras noted in his Nature interview that taking human error out of the equation could drastically reduce the estimated 94% of traffic accidents caused by drivers.
One of the most innovative aspects of Cassandras’ recent work is the introduction of economic incentives into physical traffic decisions.
To encourage cooperative driving behaviors, his research explores the use of a digital ledger.
For instance, an autonomous vehicle that yields to another to improve overall city-wide traffic flow could be rewarded with micropayments via a virtual currency. While Cassandras acknowledges the challenge of preventing users from gaming the system for cash, the framework provides a solution to bridging the gap between individual convenience and public good.
Beyond the immediate fixes to traffic jams, Cassandras’ research also advocates for a complete overhaul of urban design.
Because the average private vehicle sits idle for roughly 95% of its lifespan, a transition to a coordinated network of shared vehicles could virtually eliminate the need for massive parking infrastructures.
“If you have all these shared autonomous vehicles, like robotaxis, moving around and moving people back and forth, as opposed to having your own car trying to park it, clearly, we free up parking space,” he said. “Then we can replace parking garages with hospitals and schools, and places that are much more interesting and beneficial to society.”
While the fundamental research for this “internet of cars” already exists, Cassandras emphasizes that the final hurdle is institutional, requiring governments and auto manufacturers to agree on universal protocols.
“The biggest challenge that remains is, how do these two coexist? The human drivers will still try to do what they think is best for them,” Cassandras said. “If you’re trying to merge into the left lane and the driver is selfish and won’t let you, the cooperation is not there.”
The 2026 IEEE ITSS Outstanding Research Award underscores the impact of Cassandras’ work, solidifying his work’s place at the forefront of smart city infrastructure and the future of autonomous transit.
The ITSS has been a major home community for Cassandras’s research over the last roughly 10 years, he said.
“It is nice to be recognized by your peers, and it creates attraction for the great events and great faculty we have at CISE. But ultimately, that remains a goal down the line. We just have to keep working to get these vehicles on the roads.”
Christos G. Cassandras is a Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Boston University College of Engineering. He is Head of the Division of Systems Engineering, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and co-founder of Boston University’s Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE). He specializes in discrete-event and hybrid systems, cooperative control, stochastic and distributed optimization in network systems, and computer simulation, with applications to computer and sensor networks, manufacturing systems, and transportation systems.
Dr. Cassandras was Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control from 1998 through 2009 He was the 2012 President of the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS). He has also served as Vice President for Publications and on the Board of Governors of the CSS, as well as on several IEEE committees, and has chaired several conferences. He has been a plenary/keynote speaker at numerous international conferences, including the American Control Conference in 2001, the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control in 2002 and 2016, and the 20th IFAC World Congress in 2017. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control).