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Affiliated PhD Student

Jay Arzu

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Doctoral Candidate, City and Regional Planning

About

Jay Arzu currently resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is a Co-Founder of the community engagement platform Collective Form, where he handles Strategic Initiatives and Community Engagement.

Jay began his Ph.D. in City & Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design in Fall 2021. Mr. Arzu was a Transportation & Equity Research Fellow for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF).

He was responsible for data collection and the production of policy analysis and research. He analyzes best practices and policy solutions to promote integrated and comprehensive policy impacts in black communities nationwide.

Before joining CBCF, Jay was awarded a U.S. Fulbright Grant. He obtained his Master of Public Administration (MPA) at SDA Bocconi in Milan, Italy, while on Fulbright. Jay was also a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI) intern at the U.S House of Representatives in 2015.

Selected Publications

Will Cuomo Botch the Sheridan Expressway Removal?

I-81 project an opportunity to create equitable, sustainable Syracuse

New Orleans needs a champion

Fellow

Mengke Chen

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Director, Tencent

About

Mengke Chen recently received her PhD in City and Regional Planning at PennDesign and is currently the Director at Tencent. Her research interests include economic development, transportation investment (high-speed rail investment), and transportation and land use. Chen is particularly interested with regards to the impact of high speed rail development on urban economics in Chinese cities, as well as in Europe. The profound societal and economic impact of high-speed rail in contemporary society also constitutes a chief focus of her research. Chen received her Master’s in Urban Spatial Analytics from the University of Pennsylvania and her B.S. and G.I.S. from Peking University in Beijing, China.

Selected Publications

Chen, Mengke and Matthias N. Sweet. “Does regional travel time unreliability influence mode choice?” Transportation. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2011.

Emerging Scholar

Xiaoxia Dong

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Research Associate and Lecturer, City and Regional Planning

About

Xiaoxia Dong is a Research Associate and Lecturer at the department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research interest lies in transportation and infrastructure planning. In particular, he is eager to explore how the potential of new transportation technologies and services such as driverless cars and ride-hailing can be maximized to create accessible and sustainable urban environment. Having witnessed the success and failure of many of these emerging technologies and services in China, he also hopes to incorporate an international perspective into his research. His goal is to enable policy makers to make informed decisions when facilitating urban development with respect to new transportation technologies and services. Xiaoxia has a PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. He worked as a transportation planner at Fehr and Peers where he participated in multimodal planning, traffic impact studies, master planning, and statistical analyses. He also interned at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Beijing after college where he learned the current sustainability related policies and practices in China.

Selected Publications

Dong, Xiaoxia. 2014 “A High Speed Future.” Panorama. University of Pennsylvania, School of Design.

Dong, Xiaoxia. 2011 “Wisdom of the Businessmen of Chicago” (In Chinese). Peking University Business Review. Peking University.

Penn IUR Scholar

Reid Ewing

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Distinguished Professor of City and Metropolitan Planning, University of Utah

About

Reid Ewing, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, Distinguished Research Chair for Resilient Places, and associate editor of Cities. He holds master’s degrees in Engineering and City Planning from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Transportation Systems from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ewing’s 12 books include Pedestrian and Transit Oriented Design, co-published by the Urban Land Institute and American Planning Association; Growing Cooler: Evidence of Urban Development and Climate Change, published by the Urban Land Institute; and Best Development Practices, listed by the American Planning Association (APA) as one of the 100 “essential” books in planning over the past 100 years. His 100-plus peer reviewed articles include “Relationship Between Urban Sprawl and Physical Activity, Obesity, and Morbidity,” the most widely cited academic paper in the Social Sciences as of late 2005, according to Essential Science Indicators; and “Travel and the Built Environment: A Meta-Analysis,” given the Best Article of 2010 Award by the American Planning Association and the second most widely cited article in JAPA’s 80-year history. A recent citation analysis by Virginia Tech found that Ewing, with 26,300 citations, is the 6th most highly cited among 1,100 planning academics in the U.S. and Canada.

Faculty Fellow

Erick Guerra

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Associate Professor, City and Regional Planning

Director, Cm2 University Transportation Center

About

Erick Guerra is Associate Professor and Director of Cm2 University Transportation Center in the Weitzman School of Design, where he teaches courses in transportation planning and quantitative planning methods. His research focuses on the relationship between land use, transportation systems, and travel behavior with an emphasis on rapidly motorizing cities, public health outcomes, and transportation technologies. He has published recent articles on land use and transportation in Mexico and Indonesia, public transport policy, land use and traffic safety, and contemporary planning for self-driving vehicles.

As a practicing researcher and consultant, Guerra has completed projects on accessibility and transportation affordability for the Brookings Institution, the World Bank, the OECD, and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. He holds a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of California Berkeley, a Master’s in Urban Planning from Harvard University, and a BA in Fine Arts and French from the University of Pennsylvania. He served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Gabon from 2002 to 2004.

Selected Publications

Dong, Xiaoxia, Matt DiScenna, and Erick Guerra. 2017. “Transit User Perception of Driverless Buses.” Transportation May: 1–16.

Landis, John, Erick Guerra, and David Hsu. 2017. “Intersecting National Climate Change Policy with Local Development Trends, Travel Patterns, and Building Forms.” Journal of Planning Education and Research.

Guerra, Erick and Adam Millard-Ball. 2017. “Getting around a license-plate ban: Behavioral responses to Mexico City’s driving restriction.” Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment 55: 113-126.

Guerra, Erick. 2017. “Electric vehicles, air pollution, and the motorcycle city: A stated preference survey of consumers’ willingness to adopt electric motorcycles in Solo, Indonesia.” Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment. 

Guerra, Erick. 2017. “Does Where You Live Affect How Much You Spend on Transit? The Link between Urban Form and Household Transit Expenditures in Mexico City.” The Journal of Transport and Land Use 10(1): 1–24.

Fellow

Andrew F. Haughwout

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Interim Director of Research and Head of the Research and Statistics Group

Areas of Interest

    About

    Andy F. Haughwout is the Director of Household and Public Policy Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He is the Group’s Senior Administrative Officer and a co-editor of the Liberty Street Economics blog. In addition to his duties at the Bank, he serves on a Transportation Research Board panel investigating the value of transportation spending as economic stimulus. He is a past Chair of the North American Regional Science Council and the Federal Reserve System Committee on Regional Analysis and serves on the Advisory Board of the Journal of Regional Science. Prior to joining the New York Fed, Haughwout served as Assistant Professor at Princeton University. 

    Faculty Fellow

    Vijay Kumar

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    Professor and Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Pennsylvania

    About

    Vijay Kumar is the Nemirovsky Family Dean of Penn Engineering with appointments in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, Computer and Information Science, and Electrical and Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Kumar received his Bachelor of Technology degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 1987. He has been on the Faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics with a secondary appointment in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania since 1987. Dr. Kumar served as the Deputy Dean for Research in the School of Engineering and Applied Science from 2000-2004. He directed the GRASP Laboratory, a multidisciplinary robotics and perception laboratory, from 1998-2004. He was the Chairman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from 2005-2008. He served as the Deputy Dean for Education in the  School of Engineering and Applied Science from 2008-2012. He then served as the assistant director of robotics and cyber physical systems at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (2012 – 2013). Dr. Kumar is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (2003), a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers(2005) and a member of the National Academy of Engineering (2013). Dr. Kumar’s research interests are in robotics, specifically multi-robot systems, and micro aerial vehicles. He has served on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, the ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics and the Springer Tract in Advanced Robotics (STAR). He currently serves as Editor of the ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics and as Advisory Board Member of the AAAS Science Robotics Journal. He is the recipient of the 1991 National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator award, the 1996 Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching (University of Pennsylvania), the 1997 Freudenstein Award for significant accomplishments in mechanisms and robotics, the 2012 ASME Mechanisms and Robotics Award, the 2012 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Distinguished Service Award, a 2012 World Technology Network (wtn.net) award, a 2014 Engelberger Robotics Award and the 2017 IEEE Robotics and Automation Society George Saridis Leadership Award in Robotics and Automation.  He has won best paper awards at DARS 2002, ICRA 2004, ICRA 2011, RSS 2011, and RSS 2013, and has advised doctoral students who have won Best Student Paper Awards at ICRA 2008, RSS 2009, and DARS 2010.

    Selected Publications

    Ehsani and Das, “Yield estimation in citrus with SUAVs,” Citrus Extension Trade Journals, pp. 16-18, 2016. 

    Concha, Loianno, Kumar, and Civera, “Visual-inertial direct SLAM,” in 2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2016, pp. 1331-1338. 

    Wong, Steager, and Kumar, “Independent Control of Identical Magnetic Robots in a Plane,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 1, iss. 1, pp. 554-561, 2016. 

    Hunter, Chodosh, Steager, and Kumar, “Control of microstructures propelled via bacterial baths,” in 2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2016, pp. 1693-1700. 

    Kessens, Thomas, Desai, and Kumar, “Versatile Aerial Grasping Using Self-Sealing Suction,” in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Stockholm, 2016. 
     

    Emerging Scholar

    Shengxiao (Alex) Li

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    Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Public Policy at University of California Riverside

    About

    Shengxiao (Alex) Li is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Public Policy at University of California Riverside. He received his PhD in City and Regional Planning at Penn. Prior joining Penn, he obtained his bachelor’s degrees in urban management and economics and his master’s degree in city and regional planning from Peking University in China. His research focuses on two areas: (1) the relationship of transport and land use at the regional and neighborhood levels internationally, and (2) the travel behavior of vulnerable people and policy interventions to promote transport equity. His current project at Penn mainly focuses on the residential location, travel behavior, and wellbeing of older adults in the United States. He aims to bridge several research fields with respect to aging mobility in urban planning, geography, public health, social work, and gerontology and derive planning implications in an aging era. He has published more than ten papers in top-tier transportation planning journals, including Transportation Research Part A and Part D, Journal of Transport Geography, Transport Policy, and Transportation. He was awarded competitive thesis scholarships twice from Peking University-Lincoln Institute, in 2014 and 2017.

    Fellow

    Simon Mosbah

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    Managing Director, Economics, Finance and Grants, WSP

    About

    Simon Mosbah is a Managing Director, Economics, Finance and Grants with WSP in Washington D.C., in the U.S. Advisory Services Group, focusing on transit project development and finance. He holds a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation focused on airports, airport expansions and employment in U.S. metropolitan areas. He published an article on the topic of airports and economic development in the Journal of Planning Literature, with Dr. Megan Ryerson: “Can US Metropolitan Areas Use Large Commercial Airports as Tools to Bolster Regional Economic Growth?”. He worked on the Sustainable Communities Indicators Catalog, a project between the Penn Institute for Urban Research and the Partnership for Sustainable Communities (U.S. Department of Transportation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department for Housing and Urban Development) between 2013 and 2015, with Dr. Eugenie Birch as PI and funding by the Ford Foundation. He was specifically responsible for the selection and definition of transportation indicators for the catalog. Originally from France, Simon is a graduate of the Sorbonne (majoring in Classics, with minors in History and Linguistics), and the Ecole Normale Superieure; he holds an MBA from ESSEC Business School (majoring in Corporate Finance and Diversity Management). He previously worked as a business strategy consultant in France, specializing in rail transportation, and taught French at Amherst College (Massachusetts).

    Selected Publications

    Mosbah, S. 2013 “Rethinking transit projects in high-income neighborhoods.” Panorama. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, School of Design.

    Fellow

    Enrique Peñalosa

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    President and Board of Directors, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP)

    About

    Enrique Peñalosa is the President and Board of Directors at Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP). He was Mayor of Bogota, the Colombian capital with eight million inhabitants, for the four-year period from 2016-2019. He previously held this office from 1998-2001, during which time he led the transformation of the city into a model of sustainability, mobility, quality of life and equality. He is known for having created a network of bicycle paths, projects for the upgrading of slums, a land bank to provide quality housing in low-income neighborhoods, parks and pedestrianized areas in the poorest sectors of the city, daily restriction on car use during peak hours, public parks and libraries, public schools of high architectural quality, and the TransMilenio Bus Rapid Transit network. Beyond his own city, Peñalosa has lectured at numerous forums and universities on environmental issues, urban planning and urban policy, and has advised governments in Asia, Africa, Australia, Latin America and the United States.

    Selected Publications

    Penalosa, Enrique. 1990. Democracy and Capitalism: Challenges of the Coming Century. Fundación hacia el Desarrollo.

    Penalosa, Enrique. 1989. Capitalism: The Best Option. Fundación hacia el Desarrollo.

    Fellow

    Michael Replogle

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    Founder, Institute for Transportation & Development Policy

    Former Deputy Commissioner for Policy

    About

    Michael Replogle is the Founder at the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy and Former Deputy Commissioner for Policy. As manager of DOT’s Policy Team, he develops strategy and advises the Commissioner and City Hall on a broad array of transportation issues to advance the OneNYC sustainability agenda of Mayor Bill de Blasio. Key team initiatives include development of an agency-wide strategic plan, Vision Zero efforts to eliminate road-crash related deaths and serious injuries, freight and parking strategy, climate change mitigation and resiliency, and shared mobility. Other initiatives include intelligent transportation systems, engagement with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Port Authority, federal policy and grants, and support for the City’s neighborhood development plans.

    Previously, Replogle was Managing Director for Policy and Founder of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, where he also served as its President.  In those roles, he oversaw growth of that non-profit corporation to a staff of 80 and a budget of $10 million to advance better urban public transport, walking, cycling, and planning world-wide.

    Selected Publications

    Replogle, Michael and Colin Hughes. 2012. “Moving Towards Sustainable Transport.” In State of the World 2012: Moving Towards Sustainable Prosperity. Washington DC: Island Press.

    Replogle, Michael, Annie Weinstock, Walter Hook, and Ramon Cruz. 2011. Recapturing Global Leadership in Bus Rapid Transit. New York: Institute for Transportation & Development Policy.

    Creutzig, Felix, Maximilian Theis, Jiang Ping Zhou, and Michael Replogle. 2011. “Trapped in Tremendous Congestion: Can Beijing Find a Road towards Harmonious and Sustainable Transport?” Urban Transport of China, 9(4).

    Replogle, Michael and Keri Funderburg. 2006. No More Just Throwing Money Out the Window: Using Road Tolls to Cut Congestion, Protect the Environment, and Boost Access for All. New York: Environmental Defense Fund.

    Replogle, Michael. 1990. Non-Motorized Vehicles in Asian Cities (prepared as part of the World Bank Asia Urban Transport Sector Study).

    Replogle, Michael. 1987. Sustainable Transportation Strategies for Third World Development. Paper prepared for presentation to Conference Session on Human-Powered Transportation and Transportation Planning for Developing Countries, Washington, DC: 67th Annual Meeting (1988) of the Transportation Research Board.

    Emerging Scholar

    Ariadna Reyes-Sánchez

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    Assistant Professor, Public Affairs and Planning, The University of Texas at Arlington

    School/Department

    Areas of Interest

      About

      Originally from Mexico City, Ariadna serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Affairs and Planning at The University of Texas at Arlington; before this, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Global Shifts Program at the Perry World House. Ariadna holds a Ph.D. in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Austin where she was the recipient of the Fulbright fellowship. Ariadna’s research contributes to debates on informal housing and transportation, climate justice, and sustainability in the Global South. Her fieldwork in Mexico City’s informal settlements revealed that families enact low-energy practices, such as using public transportation and walking. In so doing, Ariadna’s work revealed the contribution of informal settlements to climate change mitigation and sustainability in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. Also, she conducted participatory action research on solid waste management for the informal community of Los Platanitos, in Santo Domingo. From 2009 to 2013, she served as a specialist in sustainable housing at the Centro Mario Molina, where she led a study to evaluate the environmental sustainability of the Mexican social housing policy. Civil engineer and M.Sc. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the National Polytechnic of Mexico (IPN) where she graduated with honors.

      Selected Publications

      Reyes, A. (2020). Housing and Transportation: The Relationship between Residential Location, Local Retail Economies, and Commutes of Low-Income Families in Mexico City. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 0739456X20932983. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X20932983

      Reyes, A. , Reyes, A. and Daigle, C. (2020) Looking Back to Look Forward: Evolution of the Habitat Agenda and Prospects for Implementation of the New Urban Agenda. Current Urban Studies8, 337-363. doi: 10.4236/cus.2020.82019

      Sletto B, Reyes, A.I., Staines, L., Vasudevan, R. (2019). Community-based Planning and Critical Pedagogy in Santo Domingo Norte, Dominican Republic. PLATFORM: Complexity | Scale | Power, UT School of Architecture.

      Sletto, B., Lamina, A.M., Oliver, D., Purdue, B., Reyes, A.I., Zepeda, J. (2016). Entrelazando Miradas: Hacia una Nueva Visión de la Infraestructura Socio-comunitaria. Reimagining Community Infrastructures. UT School of Architecture, Austin, Texas. (Co-editor.)

      Reyes, A. I. (2015). Beyond Just Light Bulbs: The Mitigation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the Housing Sector in Mexico City.  Proceedings of the International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technologies. Dearborn, Michigan

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