Sarah M. Kaufman is the Associate Director of the NYU Rudin Center for Transportation, where she researches, advocates for and educates about cutting-edge technologies in transportation. She is also an Adjunct Professor of Planning, teaching Intelligent Cities and Advanced Projects in Urban Planning.
Ms. Kaufman directs several projects related to improving transportation through technology: The Pink Tax on Transportation, an analysis of how safety concerns impact women’s travel patterns in New York City; Intelligent Paratransit, to rethink how we transport seniors and the disabled; and the Emerging Leaders in Transportation Fellowship, a program to enhance innovation at all levels of transportation planning and policymaking.
Ms. Kaufman was honored with a Responsible 100 Award by City & State New York in December 2018 and a Tech Power 50 Award in February 2019. She is a member of The List and a contributor to Forbes.com. She has been cited in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NBC Nightly News, CityLab and Urban Omnibus for her work on gender and biking, job access and intelligent transportation.
Ms. Kaufman joined NYU Wagner after nearly five years at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, where she led the open data program, created a conference and online exchange between the MTA and software developers, and assisted in developing the agency’s social media program.
Ms. Kaufman earned a Master of Urban Planning from NYU’s Wagner School in 2005, specializing in infrastructure, transportation and telecommunications, and wrote an award-winning thesis designing a bus arrival time signage system. She earned her BA from Washington University in St. Louis, majoring in science writing and concentrating in computer science. She is a font of useless NYC transit trivia.
