5MT competition sees two CivMin graduate students awarded
The Mobility Network at University of Toronto recently hosted their 5-Minute Thesis (5MT) competition for graduate students working in transportation and mobility research. This event, showcasing the impressive work of students, features a series of short, impactful presentations that distil years of research into a five-minute video presentation.
Two of the top three recipients of this year’s competition awards are CivMin grad students, who impressed both the judges and their peers with their innovative and thought-provoking research on critical transportation issues. The awards luncheon, held February 26, was overseen by Mobility Network’s Education Specialist Khadija Butt, with Interim Director Steve Farber abstaining from the role, as his student was the winner.
First Place: Paromita Nakshi
Understanding the Long-Term Social Outcomes of Transportation Inequities in Canada
Paromita Nakshi, a PhD student in the Department of Geography and Planning, took home the first-place prize with her insightful thesis on the long-term social impacts of transportation inequities in Canada. Supervised by Professor Steven Farber, Nakshi uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore disparities in transportation access and how these inequalities affect social mobility, health, and economic outcomes. Her research aims to guide policymakers toward creating more equitable transportation systems for all Canadians.
Second Place: Sebastian Villada Rivera
Investigating the Electricity Requirements and Interactions with Connected Sectors of Electrifying Canadian Heavy-Duty Trucking Freight
Sebastian Villada Rivera, a MASc student in the Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering, secured second place with his thesis exploring the challenges and opportunities presented by the electrification of Canadian heavy-duty trucking freight. Supervised by CivMin Professors Matthew Roorda and Daniel Posen, his research examines the electricity requirements and the complex interactions with other sectors as Canada moves toward electrifying its freight transportation. This work is crucial for understanding the infrastructure needs and potential environmental benefits of shifting to electric trucks.
Third Place: Hesam Rashidi
Centring Human Needs in Last-Mile Delivery Design
Hesam Rashidi, a PhD student in the Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering, earned third place for his research focusing on the human aspects of last-mile delivery logistics. Supervised by Professor Mehdi Nourinejad and CivMin Professor Matthew Roorda, his thesis critiques the industry’s reliance on algorithmic designs that prioritize speed and cost over the well-being of drivers, consumers, and retailers. Rashidi proposes a more human-centred approach to last-mile delivery systems, one that takes into account the preferences and needs of the drivers who form the backbone of the retail supply chain.
Watch the Winning Presentations!
The winning presentations are available on YouTube. You can view the thought-provoking work of these talented graduate students below.
- 1st place: https://youtu.be/7VX5UjxTtJM?si=bhRg4qNMEp6ItsLu
- 2nd place: https://youtu.be/NsmLB0HM0SE?si=ApSpNA5FA3TGOqCz
- 3rd place: https://youtu.be/XSE67ZPyaeg?si=MXqaQsSeQROxlUnC
This post was created by Phill Snel. Read the original post here.
Yu (Billie) Zhang is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering, University of Toronto, and a Transportation Modeler with the World Bank Group. With a background in civil engineering, urban planning, and transportation modeling, Billie brings a unique blend of expertise to address critical challenges in transportation systems and urban development globally.
Her research spans transport decarbonization, housing market dynamics, and land-use integration. She currently works with the Canadian federal government (Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada, or HICC) on developing methodologies for nation-wide transportation data standardization and quantification of avoided greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transit investments. Concurrently, as a consultant at the World Bank, Billie contributes to the development of global decarbonization simulation tools, focusing on city-level travel demand and GHG emission estimations for the Global South.
Billie’s academic work has produced impactful studies on residential housing supply location choices, agent-based simulation, and spatial housing price analysis, with publications in leading journals like Journal of Urban Planning and Development, Environment and Planning B and Journal of Choice Modeling. Her doctoral research with Dr. Eric J. Miller focuses on the housing supply dynamics and urban microsimulation systems, aiming to advance the methodologies for supply side simulation of housing market analysis in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA).
Billie has taught undergraduate courses in transportation planning and modern Chinese city planning, and she actively promotes women in STEM fields as a mentor with the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology (SCWIST) and ambassador for the Ontario Network of Women in Engineering (ONWiE). Through her interdisciplinary approach and global outlook, Billie continues to advance sustainable urban and transportation systems while fostering equitable access and data-driven policymaking.
Lindsey Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning at The University of Toronto (St. George) and holds a PhD in Medical Sciences from the University of Cambridge. Dr. Smith’s research focuses on built and social environments as targets for promoting sustained healthy behaviours, social equity, and more environmentally sustainable communities.
Project tittle is Healthy Youth in High-rises. The project is led by a team of researchers from the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo, and Western University, in collaboration with Urban Minds, a non-profit organization that engages youth in equitable and sustainable city building.
The research aims to explore the health and equity implications of high-rise neighbourhoods for youth. High-rise housing is increasingly being directed to accommodate rapidly growing urban populations in Canadian cities, yet supply for family and youth-friendly units is limited. The project therefore aims to capture youth perspectives on high-density living, particularly in areas with unequal access to health-promoting amenities such as green space. It uses creative participatory methods to engage youth in Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo as co-creators of the research to better understand how high-rise neighbourhoods impact their physical and mental health, and to identify urban design solutions that support healthy equity.
Led by PhD student Luísa Duarte Milani, with support from colleagues at Urban Minds, the team conducted 22 geo-logged go-along interviews and six focus groups involving participatory mapping exercises. Youth emphasized the importance of high-density environments featuring social, cultural, and activity sites, vibrant streetscapes, restful natural spaces, as well as safe transport designs to address mobility constraints and provide opportunities to play or engage in health-promoting activities. Apprehensions related to sanitation and maintenance issues, a lack of spaces designed to include youth, and inadequate transport and streetscape designs that lowered levels of perceived safety and deterred youth from travelling through certain areas.
The co-created research ensures youth have meaningful opportunities to be heard and respected, and to share their perspectives on high-rise living, health, and urban design solutions. This policy- and practice-relevant information is of value to stakeholders in multiple sectors including professional planners, urban designers, developers, and the public health community. Additionally, the participatory methods employed, which involved combined geo-logged audio recordings and momentary survey responses, offer valuable opportunities for researchers exploring mobility and place-based topics. A forthcoming paper will detail the methodological contributions to qualitative rigour and provide guidance for replicating these methods in future studies.
On November 19th, the Mobility Network, UTTAN and UT-ITE hosted a successful event focused on the future of mobility and transportation planning at the University of Toronto, in GB202. The event featured a panel of industry experts, including:
- Amy Z Jiang, Principal at BA Group
- Aubrey Iwaniw, Senior Manager at Metrolinx
- Ali Hadayeghi, Partner at CIMA+
- Vi Bui, Program Manager at York Region
- Julia Salvini, President at Salvini Consulting Inc.
The panel shared valuable insights on key topics such as entering the transportation job market, advice for new graduates and post-docs, and sharing job tips and tricks. Attendees also had the opportunity to engage with the panelists during a Q&A session.
The evening concluded with dinner and networking, allowing participants to connect and discuss new ideas and opportunities in the mobility sector.
Thank you to all our speakers, attendees, and partners for making the event a success. We look forward to future discussions on shaping the future of transportation.
Suburban Mobilities Cluster (SuMo) at the University of Toronto Scarborough is a multi-disciplinary research program that draws on expertise across nine disciplines to tackle four suburban mobility challenges: rising suburban inequalities, improving transportation design and technology, increasing transportation impacts on climate change, and emerging stakes on resilience to shocks.
With support from the Mobility Network, SuMo hosted its second Research Day on Thursday, November 14, 2024. The half-day program featured presentations from faculties and students on a variety of research projects that investigated accessibility measures, active travel of older adults, healthcare access and quality of life.
SuMo Cluster’s Director, Dr. Steven Farber, Associate Professor of Department of Human Geography at UTSC delivered the welcoming remarks. Mobility Network's Khadija Butt, Education Specialist, moderated the session.
The highlight of the Research Day was the ‘Scarborough Survey’ which collected data from Scarborough residents on their mobility and built environment barriers, automobility, access to services, politics, social capital, and health outcomes. The survey has been in active use by the cluster members and students, and several ongoing works utilizing the survey have been presented during the program.
Presentations:
Dr. Ignacio Tiznado Aitken: Introduction: SuMo Cluster and the ‘Scarborough Survey’.
Dr. Chunjiang Li: Exploring the Relationships between Physical Accessibility, Online Shopping, and Travel Behaviour for Grocery Shopping in Scarborough, Canada
Zehui Yin: What Makes People Happy with Their Neighbourhoods? Exploring Individual Characteristics Beyond Sociodemographics in Scarborough, Ontario
Dorian DiTommaso: Analyzing Predictors of COVID-19 Related Transit Risk Perception in Scarborough, Ontario,
Alec Khachatryan: Understanding the behavioural determinants of active travel among older adults: A mixed methods study
Dr Fernando Calderon Figueroa: Diversity, Community, and Mobility: Exploring Trust and the Built Environment in Scarborough.
Note: All research works have been carried out using Scarborough as the study area.
More information on SuMo Cluster and its activities are available here.
Kareem Othman is a Mobility Network Postdoctoral Fellow at the Transit Analytics Lab (TAL), University of Toronto. His research interests include public transit, electric buses, multimodal corridors, traffic management, and Intelligent transportation systems.
At TAL, Kareem is involved in research that explores the benefits and impacts of emerging technologies, such as vehicle connectivity and electrification, on public transit operations with multimodal corridor control taken into consideration.
His current research explores the impact of transit fleet electrification on public transit operations and fleet size requirements in the City of Toronto. In addition, Kareem is conducting research exploring the benefits of vehicle connectivity in improving the overall corridor performance in a multimodal level (for both public transit and the general traffic).
For this month's Faculty Partner Highlights we'd like to feature Professor Amer Shalaby. Professor Amer Shalaby focuses his research on crowds and congestion, both at the local and global levels, with particular emphasis on disruption management. This work intends to help transportation authorities to respond more effectively to unexpected impediments or crises within a network, and permit the rerouting of passengers without seriously affecting migration patterns. As this work continues to evolve it will have ramifications for predicting crowd behaviours on micro levels, such as subways and other public transit applications, where large crowd congestions occur.
The project he is working on is titled "Analytical Framework for Planning On-Demand Transit Services and a Case Study of MiWay”. The project is in collaboration with MiWay, the public transit service of the City of Mississauga. This work was done with his master's student Shahrin Islam and Postdoc Reza Mahmoudi.
The research aims to optimize the use of limited transit resources in Mississauga. While some routes are highly utilized, others remain underperforming. The project aims to explore replacing underutilized fixed routes with on-demand transit services, which are more flexible and can better meet the needs of passengers in areas with lower demand. On-demand transit, similar to services like UberPool, allows passengers to request rides via an app, with routes dynamically adjusted based on demand.
The research team extensively reviewed the literature and industry practices related to on-demand transit in Canada. Additionally, they analyzed nine months' worth of data from MiWay, including AVL (Automatic Vehicle Location) data, APC (Automatic Passenger Count) data, and Presto card data. This analysis helped evaluate the performance of the current fixed-route system, identifying underperforming routes and areas where on-demand transit could be beneficial. Based on these findings, the project's next phase will involve developing models to assess the effectiveness of introducing on-demand transit in these identified areas.
The potential impacts of this project are both practical and methodological. Practically, the research will directly inform the implementation of an on-demand transit pilot in Mississauga, helping the city make data-driven decisions on where and how to integrate on-demand services into the existing transit network. Methodologically, the project advances new techniques for evaluating the performance of transit systems, which could be applied to other cities looking to optimize their transit services.
We are now accepting submissions for Mobility Network's 5-minute thesis competition. The submission form will be open until January 1st, 2025.
Link to the submission form: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=JsKqeAMvTUuQN7RtVsVSEJWfsglOHs1Pj3RtKF_h9GFURUJMQ1EwTVZTSEZPNzIxR0pJVEVGUDZENC4u
Eligibility Criteria:
- Students must be registered in a graduate program at the time of the 5MT competition, and must have made some progress on their research and analysis. All graduate students completing research around mobility/mobility related implications are encouraged to participate.
- 5MT presentations must represent the primary research the student is conducting during the course of their graduate program.
Competitors must:
- be available for the awards ceremony and agree to be video-recorded and photographed
- The awards ceremony will take place on February 26th 2025 in GB202 @ 12:00pm.
- Allow those video-recordings and photographs to be made public.
- Submit their 5MT online via Mobility Network's form.
Rules:
- One PowerPoint slide with voice over is permitted.
- The slide is to be presented from the beginning of the oration and remain in view for the duration of the oration.
- Presentations are limited to 5 minutes maximum and competitors exceeding 5 minutes are disqualified.
- The presenter must be in view at some point in the presentation
- Presentations are to be spoken in standard oratory prose (i.e., no poems, raps or songs, other than those that may be the target of research).
- The decision of the adjudicating panel is final.
Awards:
- There will be 3 cash prizes:
- 1st place will receive $500
- 2nd place will receive $350
- 3rd place will receive $200
Matthew J. Roorda is a Professor of Civil Engineering and has been faculty at the University of Toronto since 2005. Dr. Roorda is a Canada Research Chair in Freight Transportation and Logistics, and Founding Chair of the Smart Freight Centre, established 2019. He is Chair of the TRB committee AT015 Freight Transportation Planning and Logistics.
Matthew Roorda and his students Farah Ghizzawi, Ruowei Li, Tho Van Le, and Usman Ahmed worked with Purolator to develop a simulation tool for evaluating the performance of a person-following delivery robot in dynamic pedestrian environments. The prototype is the EffiBOT, a courier-following bot deployed by Purolator. The EffiBOT assists foot couriers in performing last-mile delivery tasks in public areas, such as underground pedestrian walkways and malls. Although similar robots have proved successful in uncrowded spaces like warehouses, it is crucial to evaluate their performance in crowded, more complex environments. Ultimately, this study aims to provide quantitative evidence for lawmakers and logistics companies to make informed decisions on the safe deployment of this technology in public spaces.
First, laboratory experiments are performed to observe the robot’s obstacle avoidance and person-following behaviours. The experiments are designed to accurately reflect a wide range of intersections between the robot and the foot courier it must follow, as well as other dynamic and static obstacles it must avoid. Second, the trajectory data resulting from the experimentation is used to calibrate a social force model, an analytical force-based model that depicts the dynamics of pedestrian movements in response to each other and the environment. This model largely dictates how the robot would move in a simulation model. Third and lastly, the robot’s performance is evaluated in a simulated indoor pedestrian environment where different crowding scenarios are tested. The simulated environment comprises of a pedestrian walkway, and the agents include the robot, its operator, and other pedestrians.
In conclusion, this study presents an effective tool to reproduce the behaviours of person-following robots and evaluate its performance in the context of different environments and under varying crowding scenarios. Although reducing a complex robotic system to a simple social force model may overlook certain aspects of the robot’s behaviour, it still provides a rigorous approach to assist decision makers. Future research endeavors for this study include applications in fully autonomous delivery robots, pedestrian hotspots and safety, and standards and regulations development for the safe deployment of delivery robots in indoor and outdoor urban areas.
Dr. Usman Ahmed is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering at the University of Toronto. Dr. Ahmed’s research focuses on sustainable freight transportation systems and travel behaviour modelling. Dr. Ahmed has been working as a project manager of an electric cargo tricycle pilot study project, under the supervision of Dr. Matthew Roorda. The project has won awards for promoting sustainable and innovative urban goods delivery methods in Toronto. Dr. Ahmed is developing an advanced freight travel demand model for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. He has also worked on data collection including travel surveys, social justice analysis of off-peak deliveries, logistics sprawl, firm location choice modelling, and parking behavior of commercial vehicles.
Dr. Ahmed’s research interests include decarbonization of freight transportation, travel behaviour modelling, applications of AI and machine learning in transportation, sustainable freight transportation systems, social justice analysis of transportation systems, and land-use analysis.
Dr. Ahmed received his PhD in Freight Transportation from the University of Toronto and M.Sc. in Transportation Systems from the Technical University of Munich. He is a member of the Transportation Research Board’s standing committee on freight transportation data, the standing committee on statewide/national transportation data and information management, and the subcommittee on data, planning, and analysis group for young members.
On Friday, September 20th, the Mobility Network and the UT-ITE had the pleasure to host Ivana Semanjski and Koos Fransen, visiting faculty from the University of Ghent, Belgium.
The seminar session included presentations from Ivana and Koos and was followed by lunch and a roundtable discussion with graduate students, post-docs and faculty involved in transportation-related topics across the University of Toronto.
Michael Widener and co-PI, Amaya Perez-Brumer at DLSPH, are working with the Hispanic Development Council, an organization that seeks to promote the interests of the Spanish speaking communities in Canada – with a focus on ensuring all members of the community have equitable access to services and opportunities. The project is called Donde Vivimos: How do urban and suburban environments affect caregiving activities of Latinx newcomers.
With the rapid growth in the number of Spanish speaking newcomers from Latin America arriving in Canada over the last ten years, there is a critical need to understand how this community is adapting to their new home. In Donde Vivimos (Where We Live), we aim to uncover the complicated ways urban and suburban built environments enable or hinder Latine newcomers’ ability to thrive. We are also interested in how family and gender dynamics impact mobility and the coordination of important activities like caregiving.
We’re still in the initial stages of exploring our data, but through both our survey and interview data we’re already seeing the importance of stable and adequate housing in maintaining health and well-being. The kind of home we live in can impact the kinds of food we cook to how easy it is to get to the doctor. We expect to have our full report out some time in the spring of 2025.
This timely, community-engaged project will provide useful information to governments and policy makers and will leverage findings for actionable evidence-based recommendations, relevant to those studying the built environment, health, and immigration more generally. The interdisciplinary nature of this project will ensure the findings resonate not only across academic disciplines but also with grassroots organizations that work with and for migrants. These organizations will be able to use the insights from this research to enhance their programs and services, ultimately promoting the inclusion of Latine newcomers into Canadian society.