Please check out the first Transportation Science issue of 2025 – including Meritorious Service Awards. In this issue, we are pleased to bring back the tradition of publishing abstracts of the winners of the TSL Best Dissertation Award competition. The issue features the abstracts for the winner Xingmin Wang for his dissertation "Traffic Signal Optimization with Connected Vehicle Trajectories" and the honorable mention recipient Patrick Klein for his dissertation "Algorithmic solutions for emerging challenges in last-mile logistics." You can also read about plans for the new year in the Editorial Statement.
A few years ago, we engaged the TSL community in a discussion of the future of the journal. We posed the following question: What topics / papers would like to see featured more in the journal? Responses showed a wide range of topics, including emerging modes of transportation, automation, and a focus on work with societal impact. Responses also showed a range in terms of the key contributions of a paper, including those promoting conceptual novelty, implementation in practice, as well as advances in methods and models. This call for a broader definition of "what makes a Transportation Science paper" is in line with the vision of our editorial board to publish research that combines innovative quantitative methodologies with important applications in the realm of transportation, logistics and related areas. This year, we have updated our review guidelines and review templates. These changes will provide more guidance for referees to think broadly about a paper's contributions. To assist with these efforts, we welcomed a talented group of new Associate Editors to the journal. Their research expertise and perspectives will help us expand the reach of Transportation Science. I look forward to featuring an even more comprehensive mix of innovative transportation research in the journal in the coming years.
All the best,
Karen
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Karen Smilowitz
James N. and Margie M. Krebs Professor in Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences & Operations Department, Kellogg, Northwestern University
Editor-in-Chief, Transportation Science
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