Research Team – Faculty

T-SCORE has assembled an exceptionally qualified team with directly relevant experience in transit ridership change, mode choice, travel demand, rider information tools, integration of fixed route and on-demand transit, transit operations, data retrieval and processing, modeling and optimization, and community visioning. Our research team combines eight prominent researchers from four universities, two of which would be newly funded by the UTC program. Our team consists of the following individuals:

Dr. Kari Edison Watkins, Georgia Tech, is the T-SCORE Director,serving as the primary point-of-contact and overseeing all research efforts. Dr. Watkins’s research and teaching interests focus on transit ridership change and technology impacts on traveler behavior. She is also Co-founder of OneBusAway and serves as Chair of the Board of the Open Transit Software Foundation overseeing OneBusAway.

 

Dr. Candace Brakewood, University of Tennessee, is the Associate Director for the Community Analysis Research Track.  Dr. Brakewood’s specific areas of expertise include new fare payment technology and policy, customer information, and shared mobility modes. She has more than a decade of experience conducting cutting edge research in the field of public transit.

 

Dr. Gregory Erhardt, University of Kentucky, is the Associate Director for the Multi-modal Optimization and Simulation Research Track. Dr. Erhardt is an expert at developing complex model systems for policy analysis, with experience forecasting the transit ridership effects of a wide range of policies, including rapid-transit build-outs, bus-only lane conversions, congestion pricing and express lanes.

 

Dr. Michael Hunter, Georgia Tech, is the Associate Director for Finance and Management. Dr. Hunter researches smart cities, connected vehicles and infrastructure, applications of simulation modeling, and disruptive technologies within the transportation systems context. Dr. Hunter has also led the Georgia Transportation Institute (GTI) and the National Center for Transportation Systems Productivity and Management (NCTSPM).

 

Dr. Gregory Macfarlane, Brigham Young University, is the Associate Director for Technology Transfer and will lead the multi-agent simulation (Project M2). For a decade, Dr. Macfarlane is an expert in travel demand modeling and econometric analysis and has been working with agencies in industry to adopt technology and research into their practice.

 

Dr. Pascal Van Hentenryck, Georgia Tech, is the Associate Director for Education and will lead the development of a multi-modal optimization model (Project M1). Dr. Van Hentenryck has specialized in integrating his research into the classroom for decades and, in the last 4 years, has developed the Seth Bonder Summer Camp in Computational and Data Science for Engineering.

 

Dr. Christopher Cherry, University of Tennessee, is a key researcher in the Community Analysis track, leading the project (C3) on quantifying the impact of new mobility on transit ridership. His area of expertise is in travel behavior, pedestrian access to transit, and shared mobility. He chairs SAE’s micromobility committee, TRB’s joint subcommittee on Emerging Vehicles for Low Speed Transportation, and is on Bird’s Global Safety Advisory Board.

 
Dr. Srinivas Peeta, Georgia Tech, leads portions of the Multi-modal Optimization and Simulation (MMOS) Research Track, including key portions of the integration of research from the Community Analysis Track into the MMOS Track. Dr. Peeta has several decades of expertise in network analysis and investigating the impacts of emerging technologies. His research has addressed equilibrium and dynamics of traffic networks in multimodal transportation systems.