C2SMART's Women in Transportation Initiative
C2SMART is proud to have an exceptional group of women among its students and research staff. In honor of Women’s History Month, the Center is highlighting some of our outstanding female team members and their contributions to transportation research.
Additionally, as part of a new research initiative focused on underserved and underrepresented groups, C2SMART is taking a closer look at women’s issues in transportation. Learn more about the Center’s findings and ongoing activities in this area below.
Students
Jingqin Gao
Jingqin is a Ph.D candidate at NYU Tandon, where she works with C2SMART Director Kaan Ozbay. She studied Science and Technology of Optical Information and received her B.S. from Tongji University in China and her M.S in Transportation Planning and Engineering from New York University. Her research interests lie in offline and real-time simulation modeling, big data and machine learning approach for transportation, and transportation economics. She also worked for the New York City Department of Transportation on modeling and data analysis to support the agency’s internal planning, technical review processes and coordinated with external agencies on regional projects since 2012.
Jingqin’s dissertation, titled Leveraging Big Data To Detect, Quantify, And Evaluate The Impacts Of Short-Term Traffic Disruptions In A Connected Urban Transportation System, investigates a very visible issue in city driving – double parking. She has already published several journal papers on the topic, along with multiple papers on life cycle cost analysis. At C2SMART, Jingqin works with researchers at Rutgers University on the Research on Concrete Applications for Sustainable Transportation (RE-CAST) project. Some of the key projects she has been involved in include Manhattan Traffic Model, Off-Hour Deliveries, I-495 Managed Use Lane, Taxi GPS analysis, and Regional traffic impact study for Newark Bay-Hudson County Extension bridge deck reconstruction. Jingqin plays a leadership role both within her research group and for the larger NYU Tandon community, serving as the president of the student chapters of the Institute of Transportation Engineers and the Intelligent Transportation Society.
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Susan Jia Xu
Susan Jia Xu recently completed her Ph.D. in Transportation Planning and Engineering at NYU Tandon, where she worked with C2SMART Deputy Director Joseph Chow. She received her Bachelor Degree (2013) in Civil Engineering from Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada) and Masters Degree (2015) in Transportation Engineering from University of California Irvine.
Susan’s research interests include multimodal systems analysis, inverse optimization problems, urban logistics, activity-based schedule assignment, and big data and analytics. Her work has included evaluating the impact of urban transport infrastructure on demand, applying machine learning methods to infer individual network preferences from panel data, design of information systems based on forecasting impacts of multimodal designs on people’s activity scheduling decisions, and quantifying the social impacts of partnerships between public agencies and private companies like Lyft and Uber.
Ding Wang
Ding is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Civil & Urban Engineering at NYU Tandon and works with C2SMART Director Kaan Ozbay. She received her bachelor’s degree in Traffic Engineering and Master’s degree in Transportation Planning and Management from Beijing Jiaotong University. Ding’s research interests include traffic modeling and simulation, traffic safety management, and intelligent transportation system.
Suzana Duran Bernardes
Suzana Duran Bernardes is a Ph.D. student in Transportation Planning and Engineering in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at New York University Tandon School of Engineering. She completed her Master’s in Transportation Planning and Engineering in 2020 at New York University Tandon School of Engineering. Her Master project involved the development of a novel multi-sensor platform to collect naturalistic cycling data. Suzana focuses on leveraging non-motorized vehicles’ safety studies through new ways of collecting and analyzing data. Her research interests include traffic safety, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), and urban mobility.
Assel Dmitriyeva
Assel Dmitriyeva is a graduate student in Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU; she strives for interdisciplinary collaboration. She is a young researcher in transportation modeling and human-computer interaction. Assel received a bachelor’s degree in Mathematical and Computer Modeling from Kazakh-British Technical University. Her interest in transportation was sparked by Professor Moshe Ben-Akiva and Professor Carlos Lima Azevedo when she worked on “Day pattern Behavioral models for an integrated Activity-Based Traffic simulator SimMobility” in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Lab at MIT.
Assel looks out for any learning opportunity and therefore joined C2SMART as a research assistant to Deputy Director Joseph Chow. For a year she was a lead student researcher for one of Professor Chow’s projects, City-scalable Destination Recommender System for On-demand Senior Mobility. Currently, she is a graduate assistant of Prof. Jack Bringardner, C2SMART’s Associate Director for Education and Workforce Development Initiatives. In this role, Assel utilizes her teaching experience to develop and manage the Vertically Integrated Projects at NYU Tandon and K-12 STEM outreach. She uses her entrepreneurial skill to organize C2SMART events, facilitate workforce development and educational initiatives. She is an advocate for Women in STEM and actively participates in events and conferences to share her experience and strengthen the community. Assel is a founder of Math Club at KBTU, co-founder of Women Empowerment in Science Committee (WESC) and board member of Institute of Transportation Engineers at NYU.
Faculty Spotlight
Professor Elena Prassas
Dr. Elena Prassas, one of C2SMART’s affiliated faculty, is the Program Manager and Student Advisor for the MS Transportation Degrees at NYU Tandon. She teaches graduate courses in Traffic Engineering, Transportation Economics and Finance, and Signal Control Systems. Dr Prassas was a member of the Transportation Research Board’s Highway Capacity and Quality of Service Committee, and chair of its Signalized Intersection Subcommittee for 9 years and is still an active member of the subcommittees.
Currently, Dr. Prassas is working on pedestrian safety research for the NYC Department of Transportation. The focus of this research is on safety for blind or visually impaired pedestrians and testing advanced technologies for improving their safety, including the use of smartphone applications. She is a co-author of the text Traffic Engineering, which is used in universities throughout the United States and abroad. She has also co-authored texts on Engineering Economics and Finance for Transportation Infrastructure; The History of the Highway Capacity Manual, Volume 1; and the soon-to-be-completed History of the Highway Capacity Manual, Volume 2.
