People

RESEARCHERS

Aziz Alhassan alhassan[at]mit.edu 

MIT CEE/CSE, PhD Candidate, Civil and Environmental Engineering/Computational Science and Engineering, 2022
MIT CCSE, Master of Science in Computation for Design and Optimization, 2017
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, B.S. Computer Science, 2013

Aziz is an advocate for walkability, access and public transit in urban areas. His current research focuses on the design and analysis of walkable neighborhoods around transit stops, and promoting transit oriented development (TOD). Prior to MIT, Aziz worked as a public policy researcher at the Center for Complex Systems at KACST, covering topics in water infrastructure, labor market economics and renewable energy in Saudi Arabia.

Justin Kollar jkollar[at]mit.edu

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, PhD Student, 2020–Present. Fellow at Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU). Harvard Graduate School of Design, MArch I, 2017. University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture, BS Arch, 2012.

Justin Kollar is a certified planner, designer, researcher, and Ph.D. fellow at the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU) at MIT. Justin’s interests include the development of methods for spatial planning and implementation to create more sustainable, walkable, and equitable urban environments. His broader intellectual interests also span several areas such as digital urbanism, environmental security, administrative ecology, infrastructure studies, and territorial planning in cities in the U.S. as well as across Central, Southeast, and East Asia.

Liu Liu lyons66[at]mit.edu  

Phd candidate MIT DUSP, Master in City Planning 2014 MIT, Tongji University, BE in Urban Planning 2012

Liu is a PhD student in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning. His research lies in understanding the relationship between built forms and visual perceptional feedback on street level. Particularly he is interested in using urban imagery as a medium to promote public engagement for sidewalk improvement. Since 2017, he founded a start-up focusing on physical environment evaluation based on urban image analysis using computer vision. Before that, he worked as a college aide in MTA for analyzing and visualizing AFC data, and refining the pipeline of GTFS in 2013. In 2014 He worked as an urban data scientist in China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, during which He was appointed as external advisor for Tencent in charge of Population Flow section based on 1 billion LBSN data. He was hired by World Bank as a consultant in 2018 for the evaluation of visual environment of TOD in Beijing.

Helen Tera  helenter[at]mit.edu  

University of Tartu, Mathematics and Computer Science, PhD student since 2022
University of Tartu, MS in Software Engineering, 2022

Helen Tera is a PhD candidate at the University of Tartu in Estonia and a visiting student at the City Form Lab (CFL). Her work focuses on active mobility and the development of urban environments that are more bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly. Helen earned her Master’s degree in Software Engineering from the University of Tartu, where her interest in mobility modeling and urban studies began. In 2022, she joined a project aimed at calculating the modal split of Tartu in near real-time, primarily working on modeling bicycle flows. This experience solidified her passion for the field, leading her to pursue a PhD. At CFL, her research explores how environmental and infrastructural variables influence the route choice and frequency of recreational trips. Outside of her academic pursuits, Helen is an avid sports enthusiast, both as a participant and a spectator..

Freya Tan freya117[at]mit.edu

 Master’s student in City Planning MIT 2024

 Freya is a Master’s student in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, specializing in Computational Urban Science. Her research focuses on analyzing human mobility and modeling complex urban systems and networks, leveraging advanced computational techniques such as AI, Machine Learning, and optimization to enhance urban sustainability. Freya is passionate about integrating “Urban + Tech” and “Engineering + Design” to address complex urban challenges and improve urban environments through technological innovation and systemic solutions. Currently, Freya is a researcher at the City Form Lab, where she is contributing to social behavior analysis using multimodal models, as well as pedestrian mobility pattern analysis and road choice modeling, helping to develop a deeper understanding of urban dynamics. Before joining MIT, Freya studied at UC Berkeley, where she developed her interest in urban systems and human mobility.

Chu Li chuchuli[at]mit.edu  

University of Washington, Computer Science & Engineering, PhD student since 2022
University of Toronto, MS in Information Science, 2021
Columbia University, MS  in Architecture & Urban Design, 2017

Chu is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the University of Washington. Her research explores the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI) and urban science, focusing on enhancing urban accessibility through interactive technology. Her work has been published at top-tier HCI venues such as CHI, ASSETS, and IEEE VIS. She holds an MS in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University and an MS in Information Science from the University of Toronto. Previously, she practiced as an urban designer at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in Chicago, and as a product designer at Samsung Canada. Chu is a visiting student at CFL during summer 2024, where her work focuses on pedestrian network analysis for different mobility ability groups.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Andres Sevtsuk, PhD asevtsuk[at]mit.edu

Andres Sevtsuk is Head of the City Design and Development Group and an Associate Professor (with tenure) of Urban Science and Planning at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, where he also leads the City Form Lab. His research focuses on the influence of urban form on sustainable travel behavior and on public qualities of built environments--urban ground floors, main streets, and amenity location patterns. His work contributes to making city environments more walkable, sustainable and equitable, bridging the fields of urban design, spatial analytics and mobility research. Andres is the author of the Urban Network Analysis framework and software tools, used by researchers and practitioners around the world to model pedestrian activity in cities and to study coordinated land use and transportation development in ways that reduce transportation carbon emissions. He has published a book entitled “Street Commerce: Creating Vibrant Urban Sidewalks” with Penn Press and before that, "Urban Network Analysis: Tools for Modeling Walking and Biking in Cities" with Tianjin University Press. Andres has collaborated with a number of city governments, international organizations, planning practices and developers on urban designs, plans and policies in both developed and rapidly developing urban environments, including those in US, Indonesia, Australia, Lebanon, Estonia and Singapore. He has led various international research projects, published in planning, transportation and urban design journals, and received numerous awards for his work.

COLLABORATORS

Adrian Helmut Georges
adrian.meister@ivt.baug.ethz.ch

ETH Zurich, PhD Candidate, Transportation Modelling, 2024
RWTH Aachen University, M.Sc Industrial Engineering, 2018
RWTH Aachen University, B.Sc Industrial Engineering, 2015

Adrian is a PhD candidate at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, under the supervision of Prof. Axhausen (ETH) and Prof. Sevtsuk (MIT). His research focuses on measurement and econometric modeling of choice behavior, and agent-based transport simulations, both applied within a sustainable transport context. Prior to his PhD, Adrian gained experience in the automotive industry and worked as a data scientist for the Deloitte Analytics Institute in Berlin. At CFL, Adrian is conducting a large-scale GPS mobility tracking study.

Rounaq Basu rounaq[at]mit.edu  

MIT DUSP, PhD, 2022, Master of City Planning 2019
MIT CEE, MS in Transportation 2019
IIT Bombay, BTech in Civil Engineering 2016

Rounaq is the Director of Multimodal Transportation at CTPS, having recently finished his postdoc at the City Form Lab at,  and before that his PhD in the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning. His research interests include sustainable city planning, integrated urban systems, and relationships between mobility access and quality of life. He is particularly interested in thinking about ways to reduce auto-dependence that can enhance transportation equity and drive sustainable metropolitan growth. He has previously consulted for the World Bank on public transit accessibility and integration with on-demand mobility in Latin American cities. At CFL, Rounaq is researching pedestrian behavior and how it is shaped by the built environment. Starting in spring 2025, Rounaq will be joining the Georgia Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor of Planning.

Maryam Hosseini maryamh[at]mit.edu  

Rutgers University PhD, 2022.

Maryam recently completed here postdoc at the City Form Lab, focusing on pedestrian accessibility and walkability in urban public spaces. Prior to joining CFL, she was a research associate at the Visualization and Data Analytics Research Center (VIDA) at NYU. Her research aims to address existing gaps between planners’ needs and available urban analysis tools by developing new, theory-rich technologies for large scale assessment of the quality of the built environment at the intersection of urban planning, economics, and computer science. Her main research interests are pedestrian mobility infrastructure and planning, assessing the impact of the built environment on walkability and accessibility, and human-focused design of cities using computer vision, spatial analysis, and agent-based modeling. She develops generalizable models for automated auditing of pedestrian facilities, specifically sidewalks, and uses the developed models to create pedestrian level data sets at scale, specifically for less resourced cities. Her work highlights how these generalizable models can be applied to cities for which built environment datasets are lacking today. Starting in spring of 2025, Maryam will be joining the UC Berkeley as an Assistant Professor of Planning and Data Science.

Nicola Colaninno nico77[at]mit.edu

H2020 MSCA If-GF, 2022; Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), Ph.D. 2016;Sapienza University of Rome, BSc and MSc Arch 2005

Nicola is an Assistant Professor in GIScience and Urban Planning at Politecnico di Milano, Dept. of Architecture and Urban Studies (DAStU). His research interests and main achievements focus on applied GIScience and Remote Sensing, Urban Science, and Urban Planning, with special emphasis on Urban Climate Analysis, Planning, and Design. Currently an H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the City Form Lab (CFL) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he is investigating the pedestrian-oriented impact of the Urban Heat Island phenomenon. From 2013 to 2016, he was self-employed in the field of Technical Services of Engineering, and Specialist in Remote Sensing (RS), Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and spatial analysis supporting different works, including the UN-Habitat City Prosperity Index, and the development of a Base Plan for the city of Jacmel, Haiti, based on the model for base planning developed within the UIA-CIMES Programme and the UNESCO Chair on Intermediate Cities, in coordination with UN-Habitat.

Dylan Halpern d_h[@]mit.edu  

MIT DUSP, Master of City Planning 2020

Virginia Commonwealth University, BFA Graphic Design, 2015

Dylan engages research topics centered on data visualization, mobility and commercial activity in cities, and analysis of built form. He comes from a background in visual communication and architecture, and affiliations include Fulbright Brazil (2017), Civic Data Design Lab (2018-2020), and Senseable City Lab (2020). His work has been featured in the Cooper Hewitt Museum (2018), the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (2019), and the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2020). At CFL, Dylan is researching behavior and flows of people during COVID-19 and ways to effectively communicate insights.

Raul Kalvo  raul[at]inphysica.com

Tampere University of Technology, Estonian Academy of Arts.

Raul is an architect and computational designer. Prior of joining Tampere University of Technology as a researcher he founded computational design office Inphysica Technology Ltd and held a researcher position at City Form Lab in Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). His research topics ranged from fabrication methods to urban accessibility models. Raul Kalvo is currently lead developer for “Urban Network Analysis for Rhino” and “Grid Structure Fabrication toolset for Rhino”. Kalvo has been honored by Singapore President Design Award, best paper award at SimAUD and been multiple times nominee for EAIA Annual Prize in exhibition category. He has also worked as an architect for 3+1 Architect and a lecturer at Estonia Academy of Arts. He has lead workshops in numerous firms and institutions, such as RMIT (Melbourne), Foster and Partners (London), ARUP (London), Perkins+Will (UK), KPF (New York), SOM (New York), ETH (Zurich), EPFL (Lausanne), Advances in Architectural Geometry (London).

PAST RESEARCHERS

Meister Adrian Helmut Georges (ETH), Bahij Chancey (MIT), Reza Amin Darbari (North Carolina State), Anne Hudson (MIT), Kimberly Becerril (MIT), Daniel C. Pratama (MIT), Christina Last (MIT), Rounaq Basu (MIT), Meera Gregerson (MIT), Maryam Hosseini (Rutgers University), Kloe Ng (MIT), Rubén G. Morgan (MIT), Prathito Wisambodhi (MIT), Jung Hyun Woo  (Harvard GSD), Kevin Chong (Harvard GSD), Matthew Schreiber (harvard GSD), Alexander Mercuri (Harvard GSD), Jia Gu (harvard GSD), Haibei Peng (Harvard GSD), Karen Stolzenberg (Harvard GSD), Onur Ekmekci (Singapore SUTD) , Lisa Sweeney (Singapore SUTD), Emily Royall (MIT/SUTD), Liqun Chen (MIT/SUTD), Lennard Ong (Singapore SUTD), Farré Nixon (MIT/SUTD), Michael Mekonnen (MIT).