The Speakers

Dr. Arsalan Asim,  P.Eng., is a Senior Transportation Engineer with the City of Calgary, where he has excelled in advancing the city’s transit systems since 2011. With a PhD and MSc in transportation engineering from the University of Calgary, Dr. Asim is recognized for his extensive experience in analyzing, designing, managing, and leading transit priority initiatives and multimodal optimization projects.

He played a key role in delivering Calgary’s MAX BRT program (2017-2020) as the transit priority subject matter expert, leading the implementation of the MAX Yellow BRT. Currently, Dr. Asim is spearheading several innovative transit technology projects, including Calgary’s fixed-route CAD/AVL/APIS replacement, yard management, Transit Signal Priority upgrades, and a Smart Parking solution pilot.

Dr. Asim also has strong academic ties through research collaborations with the Transportation Engineering group at the University of Calgary. Since 2015, he has co-supervised Civil Engineering MSc and Engineering Capstone students. His contributions bridge the gap between industry practice and academic research, shaping the future of urban mobility.

Dr. Saeid Saidi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Calgary. Prior to join the University of Calgary, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute for Data, Systems and Society (IDSS) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a member of the MIT Transit Lab. He earned his PhD and MSc in civil engineering with transportation engineering and planning specialization from the University of Calgary. Dr. Saidi’s main research activities are on transportation network modeling, public transportation planning and operation, and big data analytics using mobility sensing data. He is working on different applications of data analytics in transportation systems to create actionable intelligence for cities and transportation authorities. He is a member of Rail Transit Systems Committee (AP065) at the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies. He has several active collaborations related to transit data and ITS with different transit agencies and academic institutions.