Last fall, researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst teamed up with MobiLysis, a Swiss startup spun out of EPFL, to launch a study of bike lanes and traffic patterns in the Boston-area city of Somerville, Massachusetts. Using drones to capture video of cars, trucks, and cyclists, and AI to analyze the data, the researchers aim to provide recommendations to improve traffic safety in Somerville and beyond.
In this edition of Broadway Bites, we are joined by Eleni Christofa, Professor of Transportation Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Nikolas Geroliminis, Associate Professor and the head of the Urban Transport Systems Laboratory at EPFL. Join us for a conversation to discuss this Swiss-US collaboration and the potential of AI and drone technologies for traffic safety.
Broadway Bites is a monthly lunch event at Swissnex, bringing guest speakers from Swissnex’s global network to give a short talk on their work.
Speakers
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Bio
Eleni Christofa
Professor of Transportation Engineering
University of Massachusetts AmherstDr. Eleni Christofa is a Professor in the Transportation Engineering Program of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst. Her research area is in traffic operations and safety with a focus on the development of sustainable management strategies and geometric designs that improve person mobility, air quality, and safety in urban multimodal transportation systems.
Dr. Christofa’s research has been funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Federal Transit Administration, and the Massachusetts Departments of Transportation and Public Health. Recently, she has led several projects related to the safety impacts of bicycle infrastructure treatments, incorporation of health impacts on project prioritization, equitable access, and transit-related emission and energy consumption outcomes. Dr. Christofa has authored more than 80 technical papers, conference proceedings, and book chapters.
Dr. Christofa holds a PhD and a MSc in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and a Diploma in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens.
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Bio
Nikolas Geroliminis
Full Professor, EPFL
Co-founder, MobiLysisProf. Nikolas Geroliminis is a Full Professor at EPFL and the head of the Urban Transport Systems Laboratory (LUTS). Before joining EPFL he was an Assistant Professor on the faculty of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota. He has a diploma in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) and a MSc and Ph.D. in civil engineering from University of California, Berkeley. He is an Associate Editor for Transportation Research part C and he also serves in the editorial board of TR, part B, Transportation Letters, Journal of ITS and of many international conferences. He is a member of the Transportation Research Board’s Traffic Flow Theory Committee. His research interests focus primarily on urban transportation systems, traffic flow theory and control, public transportation and logistics, Optimization and Large Scale Networks.
