Organizing Committee
The organizing committee for the Big Data, AI and Transportation Planning Applications Workshop comprises esteemed experts from leading institutions including the University of Washington, Seattle, and Northeastern University. Their collective expertise and dedication ensure the workshop's success and relevance in addressing contemporary challenges in transportation planning.
Dr. Cynthia Chen
Committee Chair
Dr. Cynthia Chen is a Professor in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is an internationally renowned scholar in travel behavior and mobility analysis and system analysis for community resilience. At the University of Washington, Cynthia directs the THINK (Transportation-Human Interaction and Network Knowledge) Lab.
The current research of THINK Lab focuses on understanding biases in the big data and developing methodologies to fuse big and small data, modeling behaviors of individuals (mobility patterns) and networks (e.g., cascading processes), and designing interventions for modifying individual behaviors and network phenomena.
Dr. Chen's work has appeared in both top-ranked transportation journals and high-impact interdisciplinary journals such as PNAS and Nature Cities. Her research has been supported by many federal agencies including NSF, NIH, DOE, USDOT and NIST. She currently serves as an associate editor for Transportation Science and is an associate director of the National Center of Understanding Future Travel Behavior and Demand (TBD).
Email: qzchen@uw.edu; Webpage: Cynthia Chen
Dr. Ryan Qi Wang
Committee Member
Dr. Ryan Wang is an Associate Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and an Affiliated Faculty of School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, Boston, MA; He is also the Director of Ryan Wang Lab.
Dr. Wang's research focuses on urban and social resilience, geo-social networking, coupled human-natural systems, natural disaster response and evacuation, and urban computing.
Email: q.wang@northeastern.edu; Webpage: Ryan Qi Wang
Dr. Lyra Chen
Committee Member
Dr. Lyra Chen is a Research Scientist in the THINK (Transportation-Human Interaction and Network Knowledge) Lab in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. Lyra Chen is an expert in cause-and-effect analysis of transportation related interventions using big data and cutting-edge machine learning tools. Her doctoral research was a landmark study for the New York City Department of Transportation, quantifying the safety effectiveness of more than a dozen traffic calming measures installed throughout the city. Her work resulted in multiple publications in top-ranked journals. Her current research focuses on evaluating the effects of repurposing street right-of-ways for recreational and commercial purposes, particularly on pedestrian flows, business activities, and congestion.
Email: lchen01@uw.edu