Kelly Clifton (she/her)
Cluster Lead
School of Community and Regional Planning, Professor
kelly.clifton@ubc.ca
Kelly J. Clifton is an internationally-recognized expert on transport and land use interactions, travel behaviour, pedestrian modeling, and equity in transportation policy. She has worked to elevate public impact research through partnerships with public agencies and community groups. Previously, Kelly was Professor of Portland State University’s Civil and Environmental Engineering, an affiliate of the Urban Studies and Planning Program, and a Fellow in the Institute for Sustainable Solutions. In addition to her faculty appointments there, she served as the interim Associate Vice President for Research for the campus and was the former Associate Dean of Research for the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science. She has also held faculty positions at the University of Maryland and University of Iowa. Kelly has a PhD in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Austin, MS in Planning from the University of Arizona, and BS in Mechanical Engineering from West Virginia University.
Esther (Esthi) Zipori (she/her)
Coordinator
School of Community and Regional Planning, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
esther.zipori@ubc.ca
Trained as an architect, infrastructure planner, and social scientist, Esthi’s work spans research, design, planning, and education. She has deep academic teaching experience having taught at the Hillier College of Architecture and Design at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, and at The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture in the City College of New York in New York City. Her teaching focuses on architecture and planning theory, as well as design practices through the lenses of social-technical systems, auto-mobility, and sustainable transitions. Esthi graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture, a Master of Infrastructure Planning, and a PhD in Urban Systems from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers in 2014, 2015, and 2022, respectively. Her dissertation, “The Future of Urban Street in the United States: Visions of Alternative Mobilities in the Twenty-First Century,” provides an analysis of contemporary ideas on the future of urban streets from technology, design, and policy actors. It also finds that the automobility system has injected itself into the fabric of sustainable urban design understanding and has stagnated the transition to alternative mobilities.
Keunhyun Park (he/him)
Associate Lead
Forestry, Assistant Professor
keun.park@ubc.ca
Dr. Keunhyun (Keun) Park completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees in landscape architecture at Seoul National University and a Ph.D. degree in urban planning and design at the University of Utah. Before joining UBC, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at Utah State University. With an interdisciplinary background in urban planning and design and landscape architecture, Keun conducts behavioural research in urban nature through the use of spatial data analytics and digital technologies. Ultimately, his research aims to understand how to design healthy, just, and resilient cities through urban nature.
Alexander Bigazzi (he/him)
Education and Learning Lead
Civil Engineering, Associate Professor
abigazzi@civil.ubc.ca
Dr. Alex Bigazzi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and an Associate Member of the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on non-motorized and lightly-motorized travel – in particular, the intersection of physics, physiology, and behaviour for active travellers. He also studies transportation emissions, including the uptake of traffic-related air pollution by active travellers. Alex received a Bachelor of Music in jazz saxophone from the University of Miami in 2001. Following that he was a musician and vagabond, eventually returning to the academy and receiving a doctorate in Civil Engineering from Portland State University in 2014. He is thrilled and deeply appreciative to be living and working in this beautiful corner of the world, on Coast Salish lands, with passionate and creative students and colleagues.
Polina Polikakhina (she/her)
Student Representative
Civil Engineering, Graduate Research Assistant
polina.polikakhina@ubc.ca
Polina is a transportation engineering master’s student at UBC. Born and raised in eastern Russia, she lived in the US before coming to Canada, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Portland State University. She then worked in transportation engineering and planning for a few years, primarily focusing on active transportation projects. Having experienced growing up in a city without the need for a car, her career goal is to help North American cities become more accessible, safe, and comfortable for people using active modes. Her research at UBC is focused on understanding the equity implications of e-bike incentive programs and their influence on driving behavior and reduction of CO2 emissions.
James Connolly (he/him)
School of Community and Regional Planning, Associate Professor
james.connolly@ubc.ca
James Connolly joined SCARP as an Assistant Professor in fall 2020, and has also been Co-Director of the Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability (BCNUEJ) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain since 2016. During his time in residence at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, James was awarded the distinguished Juan de la Cierva Incorporación research fellowship by the Spanish Government; his research was supported by the European Commission; and he served as affiliated researcher with the Institut Hospital del Mar d’Investigacions Mèdiques (IMIM).
Amanda Giang (she/her)
Mechanical Engineering, IRES, Assistant Professor
amanda.giang@ubc.ca
Amanda Giang is an Assistant Professor in the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UBC. Her research address challenges at the interface of environmental modelling and policy through an interdisciplinary lens, with a focus on air pollution and toxic chemicals. She is interested in understanding how modelling and data analytics can better empower communities and inform policy decision-making. Current projects in her research group include developing digital tools to better understand and respond to environmental injustice in Canada, evaluating the impacts of technology and policy on air quality, and exploring how different kinds of knowledge are used in environmental assessment processes.
Cynthia Girling (she/her)
School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Professor
cgirling@sala.ubc.ca
Cynthia teaches in the architecture, landscape architecture and environmental design programs. She has practiced landscape architecture in British Columbia and taught landscape architecture at the University of Oregon and the University of British Columbia. She is a registered Landscape Architect in British Columbia and a Fellow of the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects, and the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Mahmudur Fatmi (he/him)
School of Engineering, Civil Engineering (Okanagan), Assistant Professor
mahmudur.fatmi@ubc.ca
Dr. Mahmudur Fatmi is a transportation professor at the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Okanagan campus. He received his PhD from Dalhousie University in Nov. 2017. He has started as an assistant professor at UBC from July 2018. He is the director of the UBC integrated Transportation Research (UiTR) laboratory. His research interests revolve around transportation demand modelling and simulation – assisting in making effective transportation and land use policies and infrastructure investment decisions, and decarbonizing the transportation sector. Broadly, his research program contributes in two ways: 1) developing and applying econometric and machine learning models for the better understanding of travel behaviour, and 2) building and deploying agent-based microsimulation tools for testing alternative transportation-related scenarios.
Dr. Todd Handy is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia. His research expertise is in the domain of cognitive electrophysiology, with an emphasis on applying this method in three main lines of study: attentional deficits contributing to falls in the elderly, how mind wandering alters our neurocognitive engagement with the external environment, and how our attentional systems are activated by changes in our situational contexts, such as when we take ownership over an object.
Patrick Kirchen (he/him)
Mechanical Engineering, Associate Professor
pkirchen@mech.ubc.ca
Dr. Patrick Kirchen is an Associate Professor and Associate Head of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Indigeneity & Engagement at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of British Columbia. His research expertise is in Thermochemical energy conversion, navel architecture and marine engineering (combustion engines and Ion transport membranes reactors).
Andrew Binet (they/them)
School of Community and Regional Planning, Assistant Professor.
andrew.binet@ubc.ca
Andrew Binet is an Assistant Professor of Community-Engaged Research in the School of Community and Regional Planning at UBC. Through community-based, participatory research processes, they collaborate with community members to ask, answer and act on research questions that matter to them.
Since 2015, Andrew has been a proud co-lead of the Healthy Neighborhoods Study, a longitudinal Participatory Action Research project exploring the relationship between gentrification and community health in nine Boston-area neighborhoods.
Learn more about the Healthy Neighborhoods Study.
Melissa McHale (she/her)
Department of Forest Resources Management, Associate Professor
melissa.mchale@ubc.ca
Dr. Melissa McHale is an urban ecologist whose internationally recognized work mobilizes cutting-edge urban theory and practical science for decision-making in cities. Melissa’s transdisciplinary research program in South Africa is focused on sustainable urbanization processes, and on resilient social-ecological systems, forging links between leading savanna scientists, conservation organizations, and local communities in the Global South. It provides students with unique opportunities to work with and learn from historically marginalized communities, experiencing the complexity of rural livelihoods and environmental injustice on the border of major protected areas.
Theodore Lim (he/him)
School of Community and Regional Planning, Associate Professor
martino.tran@ubc.ca
Theo Lim is an associate professor at UBC SCARP. He received his PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania, a master of science in Environmental Engineering from Tsinghua University (China), and a bachelor’s degree in Immigrant Studies from Swarthmore College. From 2019 – 2024, he was an assistant professor of urban affairs and planning at Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs. While at Virginia Tech, he was the Principal Investigator on research projects funded by the US National Science Foundation and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, totalling ~ 2 million USD.
Partners
Dale Bracewell (he/him)
Cluster Strategic Partnerships Lead
Principal, Mobility Foresight
dale@mobilityforesight.com
As a visionary transportation engineer, Dale is a global mobility leader and catalyst for enabling sustainable mobility to create healthy, safe communities. As Principal of Mobility Foresight, Dale provides advisory services that integrate strategic planning with a forward-thinking mindset to facilitate transformative and resilient mobility solutions.With over two decades of mobility experience at the City of Vancouver, Dale has been a senior leader in advancing the sustainability of the transportation system in one of the world’s most liveable cities. Dale led their Transportation Planning, including initiating new sustainable mobility strategies to advance the Climate Emergency Action Plan. He created the City’s first Active Transportation team, the integrated mobility plan for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and co-led the development of Transportation 2040, an award-winning 30-year citywide plan.