Best Poster at Eisenhower Research Showcase at TRB 2020

I am happy and honored to share the news that I was awarded with the Best Poster among all doctoral students at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Research Showcase at TRB 2020 in Washington, DC. My dissertation research involves the development of simulation software to understand the effects of urban air mobility on travel behavior and land use in metropolitan environments. The work is supported by the U.S. DoT/FHWA and U.S. DoE SMART Mobility, and future work will be supported by NASA/USRA.

UAM@Berkeley

I co-founded and spearheaded a new research initiative across the Berkeley campus known as UAM@Berkeley, spanning the Civil and Environmental Engineering, City and Regional Planning, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, and Mechanical Engineering departments. The goal of the initiative is to bring together academic, industry, and government luminaries in the fields of eVTOL manufacturing, airspace management, vertiport design, autonomous flight, and urban simulation.

We hope that this will become a strong research consortium across the Institute of Transportation Studies, College of Engineering, and College of Environmental Design for years to come.

Public Perception of Urban Air Mobility

Here is a study I conducted with Airbus UTM in late 2018/early 2019. We gained insights about community acceptance from four distinct geographies: Los Angeles, Mexico City, Switzerland, and New Zealand. A representative sample from all geographies showed that noise (both amplitude and frequency/type) and safety (fear of aircraft falling from the sky) were major concerns. In addition, younger, more affluent communities were more likely to view urban air mobility positively.

This is a nascent area in which safety, noise, equity, and sustainability must be addressed in order for there to be broader community acceptance.