The Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Irvine invites applications for a postdoctoral scholar position beginning fall 2021 or January 2022.

We are seeking a motivated postdoctoral scholar interested in a new NSF Smart & Connected Communities research project that aims to dramatically improve how metropolitan areas plan for and thus leverage intelligent transportation technologies to solve pressing societal problems. The project team will accomplish this goal through targeted improvements to regional transportation system modeling (RTSM) in the short term and by fundamentally revamping RTSM in the long run. The model developments will directly support regional planning to ultimately improve community outcomes related to equity, environmental sustainability, accessibility, and mobility. To improve RTSMs in the short run, we will develop flexible and detailed models of mobility-on-demand services, identify and/or develop equity metrics and equity analysis techniques, and develop low-resolution transportation models for sketch planning. To fundamentally revamp RTSMs in the long run, we will develop a prescriptive (i.e., optimization-based) multi -level, -resolution, and -objective pathway-based RTSM framework to both analyze and recommend combinations of transportation and land use policies and infrastructure investments (i.e., regional plans).

The candidate should have (ideally) experience with or (at minimum) knowledge of:

• The practice of transportation planning and modeling
• The implementation of large-scale trip-based and activity-based travel demand models as well as large-scale multi-modal transportation network models

The ideal candidate will also have experience with:

• Land-use modeling
• The transportation planning process
• Working with government agencies, particularly transportation planning agencies
• Travel behavior analysis
• Leading research projects
• Managing graduate student
• Cloud computing and/or high-performance computing

The postdoctoral scholar will work with the entire research team including the PI Michael Hyland; Co-PIs Michael McNally, Steve Ritchie, R. Jayakrishnan, Nicholas Marantz, and Wenlong Jin; Project Scientist Craig Rindt; and two or more graduate student researchers.

The postdoctoral scholar, alongside the research team, will conceptualize and develop a suite of integrated multi-resolution transportation system modeling tools to support regional transportation planning at the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) specifically.

The postdoctoral scholar will be directly responsible for implementing, testing, calibrating, and validating the suite of multi-resolution models of transportation systems. Additionally, they will be responsible for leading and managing two or more GSRs working on the project.

The postdoctoral scholar will be using existing open-source software developed by or for SANDAG. However, the postdoctoral scholar will work in Python and C++ to develop and integrate the new modeling tools. Developing and implementing scalable models for large networks with a large number of agents is critical to the success of the project.

Please contact Prof. Michael Hyland with any questions about the position at [email protected]