MRC Alum

Dong-ah Choi, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Urban Studies at Hanyang University. She holds bachelor's and master's degrees in landscape architecture from Seoul National University and a Ph.D. in metropolitan planning, policy, and design from the University of Utah. Before joining Hanyang University, she served as a Research Professor at Korea University. Dong-ah conducts interdisciplinary research at the intersection of urban planning, landscape architecture, and public health, with a particular focus on how urban environments influence diverse health outcomes. Her work employs advanced spatial data analytics, GIS technologies, and AI-based assessments to understand urban environmental factors that promote active living and healthy, inclusive city design.

Shima Hamidi, Ph.D., is Bloomberg Assistant Professor and core faculty of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is also the founder and director of the Center for Climate-Smart Transportation (CCST), a $10 million, six university-consortium, center funded by the US Department of Transportation (USDOT). Before joining Johns Hopkins, she served as an assistant professor, the former director of the Institute of Urban Studies (IUS) and the founder and former director of the Center for Transportation Equity, Decisions and Dollars (CTEDD), a five university- consortium center funded by USDOT at the University of Texas at Arlington. She has written over 60 books and scholarly articles on urban form and its quality-of-life impacts including public health, environmental justice, traffic safety, housing and transportation affordability, and location efficiency. The results of her research have been cited in more than 200 national and regional newspapers and magazines such as BBC, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and CNN Money.

Amir Hajrasouliha, Ph.D., is an architect, urban designer, and city planner with extensive professional and academic experience. He serves as the Department Head and Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he teaches courses in Urban Design and Smart Cities. Amir earned his Ph.D. in Metropolitan Planning, Policy, and Design from the University of Utah in 2015 and has been a faculty member at Cal Poly since then. He holds a Master’s in Urban Design from the University of Michigan and a Bachelor’s in Architecture from Iran. Amir's research focuses on quantifying urban form qualities and exploring their connections to higher education, public health, and digital technologies. His work has been featured in leading planning journals, including the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA), Journal of Planning Education and Research (JPER), Landscape and Urban Planning, and Urban Studies.

Junsik Kim is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation, University of California, Berkeley, focusing on climate and housing. His research focuses on housing policy, climate change, transportation, and public health. He previously worked as a consultant and researcher at the Metropolitan Research Center at the University of Utah, the National Institute of Biological Resources (NIBR) under South Korea’s Ministry of Environment, and the Research Institute of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the Seoul National University. He holds a PhD in Metropolitan Planning, Policy, and Design from the University of Utah under Dr. Reid Ewing's guidance, and a master’s and bachelor’s in landscape architecture from the Seoul National University and Kyungpook National University.

Keuntae Kim, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Institute for Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis, where he examines transportation–land use modeling and environmental sustainability. He obtained his Ph.D. in Metropolitan Planning, Policy, and Design from the University of Utah, concentrating on transit-oriented development and business dynamics around fixed-guideway transit stations. As a Graduate Research Assistant at the Metropolitan Research Center, he investigated the interplay between land use patterns, homelessness, and transit accessibility and contributed to developing the Envision Tomorrow (ET) data-driven scenario planning software in ArcGIS. His interdisciplinary r search integrates quantitative urban analytics, GIS, and mixed methods to address housing policy, community development, and equitable planning. Before joining UC Davis, he served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Georgia Tech, where he advanced machine learning based accessibility tools. His work appears in leading peer-reviewed journals, including Transportation Research Record and the Journal of Urban Planning and Development, and he collaborates with planners, policymakers, and industry stakeholders to guide evidence-based, data-driven strategies for more sustainable, equitable urban communities.

Torrey Lyons, Ph.D., is a research scientist in the Mobility Analytics group at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), and a social scientist focusing on how transportation and energy decisions affect people, the environment, and economies. In his time at INL, he has contributed to research projects related to electric mobility, energy storage, and e-waste recycling as an analyst and PI. Torrey Lyons has published articles on transportation outcomes associated with compact development, improvements to travel demand modeling, and the economic effects of transit service, among other topics. He has taught research methods for urban planners, land use and transportation planning, program and policy evaluation, and urban economics in the US and abroad. Prior to joining the Idaho National Laboratory, Dr. Lyons worked in consulting and academia.

Keunhyun (Keun) Park,  Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Urban Forestry and a faculty lead at the Urban Nature Design Research Lab at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Forest Resources Management. Keun holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in landscape architecture from Seoul National University and a Ph.D. in urban planning and design from the University of Utah. Before joining UBC, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at Utah State University. Keun conducts behavioural research in urban nature through spatial data analytics, digital technologies, and observational methods. His work aims to understand how to design healthy, just, and resilient cities through urban nature.

David Proffitt, Ph.D., is a senior research project manager at the Arizona Department of transportation, where he works with researchers to deliver studies on a range of topics designed to help the agency improve its planning, operations, and construction projects. In addition to a Ph.D. in urban planning, policy, and design from the University of Utah, David holds a bachelor’s degree in literature and a master’s in urban and environmental planning from Arizona State University. His primary research efforts have focused on urban development strategies to mitigate the urban heat island effect in both the United States and in India (the latter as a Fulbright scholar), the use of accessibility metrics in transportation planning and programming, and the effectiveness of state-level policies in cutting greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. David’s professional career has included stints in journalism, government, academia, and consulting.

Noshin Siara Promy served as a Research Assistant at the Metropolitan Research Center under the supervision of Professor Reid Ewing, contributing to a variety of transportation-focused projects funded by the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB). During her time at the center, Noshin played a key role in several impactful studies. She built a robust database of built environment and roadway characteristics for over 1,800 segments for a UDOT-funded study exploring the transportation impacts of narrowing lane widths. She also led interview coordination with high-performing transit agencies across the U.S., helping to identify strategies to increase transit ridership in Utah. Her work extended into supporting the development of a transit multiplier calculation tool for CARB by conducting extensive literature reviews and collecting policy and land use data from various agencies. Additionally, she contributed to research on integrating public transit with micromobility services by collecting field data and conducting pilot interviews at transit stations. Noshin’s contributions were rooted in her strong skills in data analysis, stakeholder engagement, and research synthesis. Her work helped shape practical tools and recommendations to enhance multimodal transportation planning and policy.

Sadegh Sabouri, Ph.D., is a Data Scientist specializing in Behavioral Analytics at John Hancock/Manulife. His work focuses on examining the relationship between social determinants of health, including built environment characteristics, and the health of seniors in diverse urban, suburban, and rural areas across the United States. By better understanding these relationships, he has designed various experimental frameworks and implemented statistical models for health and prevention programs to enable data-driven decision-making. Before joining John Hancock/Manulife in April 2024, Dr. Sabouri was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Senseable City Laboratory in the Urban Studies & Planning Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests lie at the intersection of emerging technologies, advanced data analytics, land use, and urban transportation. During his time at the Senseable City Lab, he conducted fundamental and applied research focused on quantifying, modeling, and predicting human behavior within urban environments, particularly mobility and social interactions. Dr. Sabouri earned his PhD in Urban Planning from the University of Utah, where he spent four years at the Metropolitan Research Center working on various urban planning projects. To date, he has published more than 25 peer-reviewed papers, including contributions to planning and high-impact multidisciplinary journals. Notable recent publications include an article in Nature Human Behavior on quantifying 15-minute cities using human mobility data, a study in Cities on assessing polycentric development in terms of trip-chaining efficiency, and a highly influential paper titled “Does Density Aggravate the COVID-19 Pandemic? Early Findings and Lessons for Planners,” which, according to Altmetric, was among the top 100 most influential and discussed publications across disciplines from 3.4 million works in 2020.

Fariba Siddiq, Ph.D., earned her doctorate in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2024. Prior to joining FSU, she was a postdoctoral researcher (data science) in the Behavior and Advanced Mobility Group at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Her research focuses on exogenous shocks’ effects on travel, and how various built environment and socio-economic factors affect travel and access to opportunities in both developed and developing countries. She has published on topics related to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on travel, the use of emerging technologies across various contexts, disparities in travel resources, outcomes, and experiences among different travelers, and the role of built-environment characteristics in shaping travel. In her work, she employs a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Before her graduate studies, Dr. Siddiq served as a lecturer in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. She also worked as a consultant for the World Bank.

Philip Stoker, Ph.D., is an associate professor of planning in the College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture. Philip obtained his Ph.D. in Metropolitan Planning, Policy, and Design from the University of Utah where he completed his thesis on urban water use and sustainability. His academic foundations are in ecology, planning, and natural resource management. He has conducted environmental and social science research internationally, including work with the World Health Organization, Parks Canada, the National Park Service and the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games.

Philip has expertise in urban water demand and the integration of land use planning with water management.  His research on urban water demand has focused on how land cover, built environmental characteristics, social conditions, and demographics all interact to influence water use in Western U.S. cities.  He is also conducting research on how land use planning can be better integrated with water management in order to achieve more sustainable urban water management. Philip teaches Introduction to GIS, Environmental Spatial Analysis, Sustainable Development, and Sustainable Cities at the University of Arizona.

Wookjae Yang is an Assistant Professor at Incheon National University and the director of the City Analytics and Planning Policy (CAPP) Lab. His research focuses on urban data science, transportation planning, traffic safety, and land use policy, with a particular interest in the impacts of land use and built environment on mobility and traffic safety. His research aims to deliver evidence-based policy interventions that drive meaningful change, making cities livable, workable, and inclusive for everyone. Wookjae has been collaborating extensively with Dr. Reid Ewing on studies related to shared dockless e-scooters, corridor highway systems, lane width standards, transit-oriented development, and transit ridership strategies.