Dr. Zhao is a Professor and founding Dean of School of Transportation and Logistics of Dalian University of Technology (DUT), China. He served as the Director of International Office of DUT from March 2005 to Feb. 2018. Dr. Zhao was a Fulbright Scholar at Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University from 2008 to 2009 and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Texas at Austin in 1997 and Research Fellow of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) from 1996 to 1998. He has served as a transportation consultant in Tokyo from 1998 to 2004. He holds a Ph.D. in urban transportation planning from the University of Tokyo, Japan. His research interests are travel demand modeling and transportation policy analysis.

Dr. Zhao is director of International Society for Weigh-In-Motion (ISWIM). He serves as members of Committee on Intermodal Freight Transport of TRB (AT045), Committee on Freight Transportation Planning and Logistics (AT015), and overseas invited member of International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences (IATSS). He is a member of editorial board of International Journal of Sustainable Transportation. As Principal Investigator, he has overseen a number of projects funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), Asian Development Bank (ADB), Institute for Transport Policy Studies (ITPS) of Japan, The Korea Transport Institute (KOTI) and Ministry of Transport of China.

Dr. Zhao received International Outstanding Collaboration Award from Japan Society of Civil Engineers in 2016. He was elected as Fellow of the Faculty of Engineering, the University of Tokyo in 2017. He speaks Chinese, Japanese and English.