Current transportation infrastructure may struggle to support the long-term needs of growing urban populations. The Mobility of the Future project will gain insight into how different transportation policies impact the carbon footprint of cities over time. These insights will be gained by running simulations of these policies within virtual environments. My research is in scenario discovery and outcome analysis. Scenario discovery entails generating different combinations of city parameters, such as fuel prices and median population age. The goal of the outcome analysis is to develop methods for determining which parameters lead to low estimates for carbon emissions. A simulator will run different transportation policies inside virtual cities that take on the parameters of input scenario samples. The developed analysis methods will be used to determine how the input scenario parameters impact the simulation outcomes. This analysis will provide insight into how cities should design transportation policies to minimize their carbon footprints.

I like transportation. Through SuperUROP, I can dive into research that combines my interests and studies. I hope to apply what I’ve learned from my computer programming and transportation modeling classes, and I want to better understand how models and simulations reflect urban trends. But above all, I’m excited to contribute to research that takes a computational approach to improving sustainable public policy.