About

Marcel Moran, PhD, is a Faculty Fellow at the NYU Center for Urban Science + Progress. He studies urban transportation via a variety of methods, including satellite imagery, mining open datasets, and in-person field collection. His published work has led to policy changes in both San Francisco and New York City, and his research has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Forbes, and Bloomberg CityLab. Starting in Fall 2025, he will be an Assistant Professor, specializing in Urban Spatial Data Science, at San José State University. 

He received his PhD from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley in May 2023. For academic year 2021-22, he was given the department's Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award. He holds a bachelors degree from Harvard University and a masters degree from the University of Chicago. His MA Thesis, which was awarded the Earl S. and Esther Johnson Prize, examined U.S. municipalities that financially subsidize Uber and Lyft. He is an avid cyclist, and has biked the entire coast of California. He lives in New York City.

CV, Google Scholar

Dissertation: Which Streets are Complete? Mapping Pedestrian, Transit, and Cycling Infrastructure at Scale in San Francisco, CA.