Mobility Network x UT-ITE Seminar (UGhent)
Join the Mobility Network and the UT-ITEÂ as we host a seminar with two visiting faculty from the University of Ghent, Belgium. The seminar presentations will be followed by lunch and a roundtable discussion. This session is open to all graduate students at the University of Toronto. Please register to secure your spot.
Koos Fransen
Koos is currently employed as project leader for Projectbureau Ruimte (city of Ghent), specifically working on (1) a temporary use case for the Sint-Bernadette neighborhood 'Proeftuinwijk Bernadette', (2) the strategic vision for the railway infrastructure in Ghent 'Spoor in en naar de stad' and (3) the spatial redevelopment/redesign of the historic public squares Vlasmarkt and Sint-Jacobs.
He has an educational background in (1) Engineering - Land Surveying with a focus on geographic information systems and spatial analysis, and (2) Urbanism and Spatial Planning. He has worked as a PhD in transport modeling and accessibility analysis, specifically focusing on the relationship between travel behavior, accessibility and spatial planning, and was a post-doctoral researcher at VUB (Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research, focus on GIS and transport planning) and UGent (IntSys research group, focus on urban vehicle access regulations in the EU project ReVeAL). He is now a Guest Professor teaching on sustainable mobility transitions at the Mobility and Spatial Planning research group (UGent).
Koos is also the founder of STR.AAT (www.str-aat.be) - an urban think tank on storytelling, public space and co-creation - since 2021, as well as freelancer for co-creation bureau Meneer De Leeuw in 2021-2022. Examples of current STR.AAT projects are: (1) 'Straatart' (in collaboration with Alice Martha) - translating children and youngsters' stories in street art, (2) 'Comment ça vaas' - pass-me-on vases, (3) 'Van wie is de straat?' (in collaboration with Laura Zuallaert) - a documentary on urban street life in Ghent, in the past and present, and (4) 'De verhalenkaravaan' - linking (street) stories by children and elderly to construct a collection of immaterial heritage.
Ivana Semanjski
Ivana is a professor in Smart and Sustainable Systems Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Ghent University. She has over 20 years of work experience in mobility-related research. During this time, she has participated in more than 20 scientific projects, working with multidisciplinary teams on transport planning issues. She has published over 100 papers and has edited and co-authored ten books, including the latest book on Smart Urban mobility, published by Elsevier. She is also an expert evaluator at the European Commission for mobility planning- and urban data analytic- related topics, sharing her knowledge and passion for mobility data analytics with policy makers, industry partners, and researchers.
Her background is in traffic and transport sciences and she is an active part of the master in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research and Sustainable Mobility Analytics, and a part of the EIT Urban Mobility Master School and FlandersMake core lab, covering the topics of smart mobility and intelligent industry systems. She also teaches courses on Advanced topics in mobility and logistics, Design of urban services, Digital twins and the Development of digital twins.
Her research interests include big data analytics, smart and sustainable mobility, decision support systems and service planning and optimization.