Transit Lab

Nina is a fifth year Mechanical Engineering PhD student. She has a Bachelor's degree in Physics, received her Master's in her current program in Mechanical Engineering working on soft robotics, and is now working on Urban Theory and Science in JTL. She is a DOE CSGF alum, and her other prior research endeavors include stints in particle physics, soft matter physics, materials science research, and more. Her current interests are in using available data to understand how and why cities grow and attract the people they do, developing both analytical models to understand trends as well as accompanying theoretical models to complement the data.

Mingyi He is a graduate student in the Interdepartmental Program in Transportation at MIT and a member of the Urban Mobility Lab (JTL). He holds a Master of Science in Transportation from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master’s degree in Architecture from Tsinghua University, with a double major in Architectural Design and Economics.

Drawing on practical design expertise and an interdisciplinary background in architecture, urban design, and transportation, he advances research in urban science and human mobility by integrating network science with multimodal urban AI to better understand and design complex urban systems.

Xinyi Huang is a dual-degree student pursuing a Master of Science in Transportation and Master in City Planning at MIT, supervised by Prof. Jinhua Zhao. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics with a minor in Urban Studies from the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Her research focuses on travel behavior, causal inference, and transportation economics. She’s also interested in using large language models to augment knowledge production in urban and transit planning.

Qi Kang is a third-year Ph.D. student advised by Professor Haris N Koutsopoulos, working on Demand-Responsive transit. Prior to coming to Northeastern University, he was a software engineer at Continental Automotive Singapore, where he worked on a research project within the Continental-NTU Corporation Lab.

Qi received his Master’s degree in robotics at the National University of Singapore and his Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technologies. His research interests are deep reinforcement learning-based decision-making for autonomous vehicles and multiagent systems.

Donghang is a third-year graduate student at MIT. Before joining MIT, he obtained dual Bachelor’s degrees in Engineering and Economics from Peking University. His research interests lie at the intersection of artificial intelligence, causal inference, and social computing. He is currently working as a research assistant at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), focusing on AI for individual career recommendation and human capital development.

Michael is a second-year MST student at MIT, and a lifelong enthusiast in finding ways we can make transportation systems more integrated, thoughtful, humanistic, efficient, and sustainable. Prior to MIT, he obtained his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of California, Berkeley. His research projects include quantifying the shifts in regional travel patterns induced by the future of work and post-pandemic shifts in behavior, achieving regional climate goals, and tactically leveraging the customer feedback of public transit agencies. Outside of the lab, he enjoys riding long-distance trains, photography, exploring new cities and finding good food.

Zhaoxiang Li is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) at MIT. He received his Master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from Peking University in 2025 and his Bachelor’s degree in Transportation Engineering from Tongji University in 2022.

Cooper is a first-year graduate student at MIT, pursuing a Master of Science in Transportation (MST) degree advised by Prof. Jinhua Zhao. He grew up in Brooklyn, NY and earned his Bachelor’s degree from Harvey Mudd College in Computer Science and Mathematics. Before MIT, Cooper worked on performance modeling, predictive modeling, and signal processing in the fields of government contracting and corporate insurance. His research interests involve airport ground connection, scheduling and transfers, and network optimization. He is currently working at JTL-Transit Lab in collaboration with Massport.

Ethan is a first-year M.S. in Transportation student. Originally from the Chicagoland area, he previously studied at Columbia University in New York City where he received his undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering concentrating in Construction Management and Structural Engineering with specific focus on their relations to Transportation. To this degree, he has engaged with all different aspects of the Transportation industry, both academic and professional. As an undergraduate he conducted bus, taxi, and ride-share modeling research in the Urban Systems Engineering Lab at Columbia. Professionally, he interned for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Amtrak, working on a range of projects from ridership analysis, to track engineering, and project management. Armed with his interests in Public Transit, Ethan is excited to work with JTL and JR East on optimizing different methods of ridership demand prediction.

Hanyang is a third-year MST student at MIT. Before joining MIT, he received his Bachelor of Social Science in Economics and Bachelor of Science in Business Analytics from the National University of Singapore. As a passionate transportation enthusiast, Hanyang has explored nearly 100 urban rail transit systems across all six continents. He aspires to elevate global mobility systems to achieve optimal accessibility and performance. His primary research interests are empirical studies on transit operations and commuter behavior, airport rail links, transportation information systems, Mobility as a Service (MaaS), and emerging mobility technologies.

Yuhan Tang is a graduate student from the Interdepartmental Program in Transportation at MIT. He received his Master of Science degree in Systems Engineering from University of California at Berkeley and Bachelor’s degree in Transportation Engineering from Tongji University. He also worked as a Graduate Student Researcher at California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology (PATH).

Lucien is a second-year graduate student at MIT, pursuing a Master in City Planning and a Master of Science in Transportation, advised by Jeff Levine and Awad Abdelhalim. He grew up in Sebago, Maine and received bachelor’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Environmental Studies from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Before coming to MIT, Lucien worked as a transit analyst helping create transit development plans and rural intercity bus plans in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and Texas. His research interests include demand modeling, transit equity analysis, and geospatial analysis.

Hanyong Xu is a doctoral student at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) at MIT and a member of the Urban Mobility Lab (JTL). Her research focuses on uncovering, understanding, and rectifying algorithmic fairness concerns inherent in urban mobility systems. Prior to joining DUSP, she accumulated about three years of professional experience as both a GIS specialist and a data analyst. During this period, she adeptly orchestrated data analyses, developed algorithms, and crafted web-based solutions, all of which catered to the needs of decision-makers operating within the spheres of urban planning and e-commerce. She holds a Master of Urban Spatial Analytics from the University of Pennsylvania and an Honors Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Architectural Design and Economics from the University of Toronto.

Niaz is a doctoral student in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Before pursuing his doctoral studies, he earned a Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning (BURP) in 2019 and a Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) in 2022 from the Department of Urban and Regional Planning (DURP) at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), specializing in transportation policy and planning. He also holds the position of Assistant Professor in the DURP at BUET, though he is currently on leave.

His research focuses on transportation policy and planning, with a particular interest in applying advanced analytical methods in statistics, data science, and decision systems to address complex transportation challenges. Niaz is particularly interested in transportation and built environment interactions, road safety, active and public transportation, emerging mobility, and freight transportation.