

Cyclist Wayfinding and Stress in Wuppertal, Germany
I am very excited to be starting new line of research at Bergische Universität Wuppertal during my 2016 sabbatical appointment. Here, I'll be working with researchers from the Departments of Computer Simulation and Urban Studies & Sustainable Infrastructure Planning on a project focused on investigating bicyclist wayfinding strategies in an urban environment, one in which terrain and lack of bicycle facilities are ever-present. Through the use of bio-sensors, geospatial track


Social Uplifting using Twitter and GIS
Due to the influx of large microscale datasets obtained from social media, there is a renewed interest in understating human health within neighborhoods; especially in mitigating negative health outcomes. Working with colleagues from the SiTI Higher Institute on Territorial Systems, Turin, Italy, we have embarked on a study to understand how human sentiment is affected by neighborhood health over time and space. Preliminary results have already been disseminated, with future


Urban design and mobility
A large part of my research investigates how urban design facilitates human wayfinding success while walking or bicycling. Using a bottom-approach to modeling, this research seeks to supplant traditional mobility studies in that micro-scale urban morphological metrics are explicitly accounted for, and aid in predicting transportation mode-choice and mobility trends. This research has two main components; 1) utilization of disaggregated urban morphological variables in bicycle


Spatiotemporal Analysis of Human Sentiment and Travel Mode Choices
The surge of microscale geospatial media data is helping researchers understand several space-time phenomenon. To this end, my co-authors and I are currently examining Twitter data to understand the human sentiment of motorized and non-motorized travel modes, using Chicago and Washington D.C. as case studies. We found that spatiotemporal trends of sentiments vary widely for each city-indicating that contextual effects influence attitude while traveling. Additionally, using a


Food Insecurity Analysis: The Where and the Why
Food insecurity is a global problem that has no clear solution. My interest in this issue is to apply advanced spatial and GIS models that provide a greater understanding of the spatial and aspatial barriers to healthy food access. As a result of a USDA sponsored grant, I am able to assist a team of researchers set on studying this issue in Michigan. #foodaccess #foodinsecurity #GIS