The 51st International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva recently concluded. Among more than a thousand entries from around the world, the team led by Professor Lee Der-Horng of the Smart Urban Future Laboratory at Zhejiang University–University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Institute (ZJUI) stood out for its sustained research and innovation in intelligent transportation and logistics. Its Urban Public Transport Capacity Sharing Intelligent Management System won both a Gold Medal and the Special Prize of the Saudi Arabia Organizing Committee, while its Large-Model Platform for Multimodal Logistics received a Silver Medal. This year, the coveted Special Prize of the Saudi Arabian Organizing Committee was awarded to just two teams worldwide, underscoring the exceptional value of Professor Lee’s winning projects.
The Urban Public Transport Capacity Sharing Intelligent Management System addresses the core challenge of imbalanced urban transport resource utilization through an innovative shared-capacity model. This model leverages underutilized bus capacity for last-mile urban freight delivery, all without compromising core passenger transit services. Built on a proprietary intelligent scheduling algorithm, the system not only alleviates urban logistics bottlenecks but also cuts carbon emissions and boosts the overall operational efficiency of public transit networks, delivering a scalable, actionable solution to advance greener, smarter urban development worldwide.
The team’s second innovation, a Large-Model-Enabled Multimodal Logistics Platform, targets a longstanding pain point in cross-border freight: siloed, fragmented data and lagged, reactive decision-making. By unifying end-to-end data across sea, land, and air freight legs, the platform automates full workflows including intelligent route optimization, cross-border compliance verification, intelligent document recognition, and real-time full-journey cargo tracking, driving measurable improvements in efficiency, resilience, and sustainability across global cross-border logistics networks.
During the formal judging process, Professor Lee presented both innovations to the expert panel, fielding detailed questions on their real-world deployment and scalability, and earned high praise and formal recognition from the judging committee. Over the course of the exhibition, the team’s booth drew consistent traffic, with industry experts, academic peers, trade visitors, and global practitioners stopping for in-depth discussions. The CEO of Veritrans International Co., Ltd. also spoke highly of the team’s project and expressed strong interest in future collaboration. Live system demonstrations, paired with targeted media outreach including an interview with Swiss media, showcased the global relevance of the team’s research in green mobility and sustainable urban transport.
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Looking ahead, Professor Lee’s team will continue to advance frontier research in intelligent transportation systems and sustainable urban mobility, with a core mission to translate more lab-born innovations into scalable, real-world deployments that drive inclusive, low-carbon urban development globally.
