One of the essential parts of the mission of the Traffic Safety Center is to train future researchers, academics and policymakers in traffic safety. To that end, the Center employs graduate student researchers from a variety of disciplines to work on projects and, in the process, get a deep immersion into select aspects of traffic safety.
This spring, 13 students are working as graduate student researchers (GSRs). They come from varied backgrounds, including liberal arts, industrial engineering, epidemiology and biostatistics, architecture, environmental systems, public policy, and social welfare.
Brief biographies appear below.
Rhianna Babka is pursuing a masters in social welfare with a focus on management and planning. Her current area of interest is in ensuring transportation accessibility and equity for all populations to foster healthy, safe, and livable communities. At the TSC, Babka is working on research that addresses barriers older adults face in accessing public transportation.
Tierra Bills, a native of Detroit, received her B.S. in civil engineering technology from Florida A&M University and is enrolled in the masters program in civil engineering. At the TSC, she has been working on a number of projects, including methodologies for allocating resources for pedestrian and bike safety programs, pedestrian counting measures, evaluating safety programs along the San Pablo Avenue SMART Corridor, and analyzing pedestrian and bicyclist behavior at roundabouts.
Sarah Duffy is pursuing her masters in public policy at the
Goldman School. She received a B.A. from Stanford University. At the TSC, Duffy is working on research that addresses occupational
safety and has helped write two reports on employee vehicle backing
incidents and safety management at the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans).
Emily Ehlers is pursuing a masters in city and regional planning. She is particularly interested in transportation equity, accessibility, and safety. At the TSC, Ehlers is analyzing the effects of increased automobile efficiency on bicycle and pedestrian safety along the San Pablo corridor.
Kitae Jang received his B.S. in civil engineering from Hanyng University,
Seoul, Korea in 2004 and masters in civil and environmental engineering from UC
Berkeley. He is currently a Ph.D. student in the transportation engineering
program at Berkeley. His research interests include high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) and toll (HOT) lanes, congestion pricing, traffic flow theory and control, and traffic safety. Kitae Jang's personal Web site is here.
Rafael Pardo Jiménez is pursuing a M.S. in transportation
engineering at UC Berkeley. He received his B.S. in civil engineering from
Universidad de los Andes (Bogota, Colombia) where he performed research in bus rapid transit systems. He was working at the project department of
Cementos Argos in Barranquilla, Colombia, before coming to Berkeley as a
graduate student.
Junhak Lee is a Ph.D. candidate in environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley, where he is working on environmental modeling with Geographic Information Systems(GIS) and remote sensing of forest ecosystems. He is working on a GIS crash mapping project and a project to summarize the top 5% of collision locations in California. Both projects involve converting collision databases into geographic data so that researchers can visualize and analyze the characteristics of collisions in California in a spatial and temporal manner.
Soon Mi Oh received her M.S. from Seoul National University. She is pursuing a Ph.D. in transportation engineering. She is studying how wet pavement contributes to crash frequency.
Mariana Parreiras is a dual degree graduate student in city and regional planning and transportation engineering. She earned a bachelors degree in architecture from UC Berkeley. Currently, she splits her time between classes, working as a graduate student researcher at the TSC, community efforts in San Francisco such as Fix Masonic and Car-Free Market, the BART Bicycle Access Task Force, and co-editing the e-newsletter and wiki for the Bicycle and Pedestrian Council of the Institute of Transportation Engineers. Her main interest is in improving traffic safety for the nonmotorized modes of transportation.
Jennifer Rice has a B.A. in biology from Rice University and a masters of public health from UNC Chapel Hill. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in health services and policy analysis at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. At the TSC she is working on a surveillance project of pediatric incidents of driveway "back-overs" in California.
Rebecca Sanders is in her first year of the doctoral program in city and regional planning, focusing on bicycle and pedestrian access and safety. Her current research project is developing performance measures for Caltrans to monitor the effects of roadside design features on pedestrian and bicycle safety, economic vitality, and environmental sustainability.
Bob Schneider received his B.A.from Augustana College, Rock Island and masters in regional planning from the UNC Chapel Hill. From 2001-2007, he worked as a transportation planner and project manager for the Toole Design Group, LLC. Currently, he is a Ph.D. student in the city and regional planning at UC Berkeley. At the TSC, he is working on a pedestrian exposure project which involves modeling and counting pedestrian travel in Alameda County. His interests include pedestrian and bicycle transportation safety, design, and volume modeling and multimodal transportation impact assessments. He developed and taught the Department of City and Regional Planning's Pedestrian and Bicycle Transportation Planning course in Spring 2008. Schneider has served as the Chair of the TRB Pedestrian Committee’s Research Subcommittee since 2005.
Casey Tsui is a masters student in epidemiology and biostatistics at the School of Public Health. He received a B.A. in biochemistry at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. At the TSC, he is providing statistical programming support on a motorcycle safety project, investigating what kind of safety measures and training courses motorcyclists take in the Bay Area, and the best contact methods to reach this changing population.
