The 2nd Women in Transportation Panel Discussion Networking Night had several prominent women speakers from New York City Department of City Planning (NYCDCP), New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority (NJSEA), and Cambridge Systematics who discussed their career paths, solicited advice and helped others better understand the day-to-day work of a transportation professional. This event was a part of the broader Women at Tandon Initiative, which is a formal effort to increase representation, retention and success of women in the science, technology, math and related fields.

Guest Speakers:

Olga Abinader

Acting Deputy Director • Environmental Assessment and Review Division (EARD) • NYC Department of City Planning
Olga is the Acting Deputy Director of the EARD at the NYC Department of City Planning. She is an environmental planning professional with extensive planning consulting and technical review experience in the public and private sectors who have 10+ years of industry experience in government administration, staff management, regulatory processes, and environmental review. Olga received her Master in Urban Planning from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and her Bachelor of Art from Brown University.

Nadereh Moini
Chief of Transportation • New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority (NJSEA)
Nadereh Moini is the chief of Transportation in NJSEA. Her experience includes the management and design of various ITS projects, data analysis/mining, multimodal safety and crash analysis, vehicle/transit automation and safety and security of bus and rail transit. She has many publications in the area of parking guidance system, port/yard planning, freight movements, microscopic/mesoscopic traffic simulation modeling, and multimodal crash and safety analyses. Nady holds a Ph.D. in Civil & Environment Engineering from Rutgers University. She has Professional Engineering (P.E.) licenses in multi-state and registered Professional Traffic Operations Engineer (PTOE).

Yixin Wang
Senior Associate, Cambridge Systematics
Yixin is a Senior Associate at Cambridge Systematics (CS) with 14 years of experience in both public agency and transportation planning consulting. Prior to joining CS, she served as a Project Manager with NYCDOT, AECOM/URS, and Sam Schwartz Engineering. Ms. Wang has committed herself to innovative approaches for diverse transportation studies, including Integrated Corridor Management, Active Transportation and Demand Management, Connected Vehicles, transportation modeling and simulation, traffic operations, and traffic impact analysis. She is particularly experienced in managing large and complex projects and incorporating current and emerging technology.

Elena Prassas (Moderator)
Associate Professor, New York University
Dr. Elena Prassas is an Associate Professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, where she teaches traffic engineering, simulation, and transportation economics. She has been an active member of TRB’s Highway Capacity and Quality of Service Committee and was Chair of the Signalized Intersection Subcommittee of HCQSC for 9 years. For the past 15 years, she has been actively involved in research surrounding signalized intersections and arterials. Dr. Prassas is a co-author of the text Traffic Engineering, which is used in universities throughout the United States and abroad. She is currently working on studying safety for pedestrians at signalized intersections.