Ya Gao is a Mobility Network Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering at the University of Toronto St. George. She is a transportation and urban planning researcher whose areas of interest include travel demand modelling, the modelling of travel behaviour choices, and the interaction between urban development and transportation. She holds a doctorate in urban planning with a focus on travel behaviour research from Tongji University. Her research involves travel demand modelling with the introduction of new mobility technologies, incorporating big data and machine learning in travel behaviour modelling, examining heterogeneity in travel behaviour, and exploring the impact of online shopping on travel demand.
At the Travel Modelling Group (TMG) under the direction of Dr. Eric Miller, she has been involved in the development of the next generation of TASHA (Travel/Activity Scheduler for Household Agents), the upgrade of GTAModel V4 (an activity-based travel demand model in the Great Toronto and Hamilton Area) and the development of PADUM (Planificateur d’activités de déplacements urbain de Montréal).
Her current research explores the supply and demand of ride-hailing in the city of Toronto using the GTAModel V4 travel demand model system. The research aims to investigate the interaction between ride-hailing supply and demand, its effects on the demand for other travel modes, and the impact of capping ride-hailing licenses using microsimulation techniques.