Professor Preston has successfully supervised over 25 PhD and EngD students at the Universities of Leeds, Oxford and Southampton. He is a Co-investigator of the Sustainable Infrastructure Systems Doctoral training centre. His Doctoral Research Projects align closely with his teaching and cover three broad areas: Transport Economics and Policy Transport, Energy and the Environment Project Economics and Management
Transport Economics and Policy
Recent students have covered a range of issues. These have included:
Current students are working on the modelling of various aspects of public transport systems in Malaysia (Siti Ab Karim), Korea (Wonman Oh) and the UK (Yiwei Guo, Marcus Young). A growing area is that of port economics including the supply and demand for container port services (Manuel Buitrago) and the relationship between ports and economic development (Jongjoon Song).
Transport, Energy and the Environment
Past work has included that of Kanjing He (2012) on sustainable transport planning for special events, and James Pritchard (2015) on the environmental sustainability of rail.
Current students are examining the carbon footprint of road transport (Matt Grote, EngD with Southampton City Council), environmental impact assessment and evaluation (Sirirat Yensong) and the role of transport oriented development (Nasma Hannawi)
Project Economics and Management
Recent studies have included rail project cost management (Heulyn Thomas, 2009), public private partnerships for new road and rail schemes (Byungwoo Gil (2013) and Jihong Park (2014)) and railway maintenance (Yusuke Miyazaki (MRes, 2015)). Myungjin Kim is studying flood management projects by using real options analysis and a studentship is currently available to undertake a similar project for the transportation sector.