About Us
Faculty Members
Kelly Clifton (she/her)
Cluster Lead
School of Community and Regional Planning, Professor
Kelly J. Clifton is an internationally recognized expert on transport and land use interactions, travel behavior, pedestrian modelling, 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 the 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 a BS in Mechanical Engineering from West Virginia University.
Amanda Giang (she/her)
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Associate Professor
Amanda Giang is an Assistant Professor in the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UBC. Her research addresses 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.
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
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.
Yiyang is a PhD student in the Faculty of Forestry with a background in urban forestry. She is passionate about promoting equitable access to urban public spaces through mixed-method research. Since her master’s studies, she has focused on connecting communities to urban nature, through diverse travel modes, by holistic planning and inclusive urban design. She has worked as a UBC Sustainability Scholar for Metro Vancouver, contributing to policies that encourage sustainable travel to regional parks, and with UBC Campus and Community Planning on SEEDS’ knowledge exchange initiatives.
James Connolly (he/him)
School of Community and Regional Planning, Associate Professor
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 an affiliated researcher with the Institut Hospital del Mar d’Investigacions Mèdiques (IMIM).
Esther (Esthi) Zipori (she/her)
Coordinator
School of Community and Regional Planning, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
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.
Cynthia Girling (she/her)
School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Professor
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), Associate Professor
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.
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, naval architecture and marine engineering (combustion engines and Ion transport membrane reactors).
Natalia Echeverri
(she/her)
School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Assistant Professor
Natalia Echeverri is an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Her interdisciplinary teaching and research examine the social, ecological, and material dimensions of infrastructural development, with a focus on the negotiated relationships between urban development, landscape, and environmental systems. Her work explores how urban nature is produced through design practice and how new ecologies emerge within cities. Natalia’s research and practice bridge architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. She has practiced in offices including Foster and Partners and Hood Design Studio, and is a founding partner of VALECHE Studio, a landscape design consultancy based in Hong Kong and China focused on speculative installations and applied ecological restoration projects. Her work emphasizes project-based collaboration as a way to reconcile the epistemologies of landscape practitioners and ecologists. Natalia holds a Master of Architecture and a Master of City Planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from the University of Washington.
Erick Villagomez (he/him)
School of Community and Regional Planning, Lecturer
Erick Villagomez is an educator, independent researcher and designer with academic and professional interests in the human settlements at all scales. He is an adjunct professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Chip and Shannon Wilson School of Design within the Interior Design program. For several years, he was also an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, where he taught a number of graduate and undergraduate courses focused on settlements. Erick is the founding principal of Metis Design-Build — a practice that works on diverse projects ranging from small-scale architecture to urban design consulting — and the Editor-in-Chief of Spacing Vancouver, an online publication looking at Metro Vancouver’s public realm and urban landscape. Urban cartography and illustration are also a part of Erick’s diverse practice.
Shin Oblander (they/them)
Department of Marketing and Behavioural Science, UBC Sauder School of Business
Shin Oblander is an Assistant Professor in the Marketing and Behavioural Science Division at the UBC Sauder School of Business. Their research focuses on developing and applying statistical, econometric, and probabilistic machine learning methods to study consumer decision-making. Shin’s work examines how people form beliefs, make choices, and respond to uncertainty, with an emphasis on rigorous methodological innovation. Their research has been published in leading academic journals including Marketing Science and Psychological Science, and has been featured in major media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and New York Magazine. Shin’s work contributes to broader conversations about decision-making, data-driven policy, and the interpretation of evidence in complex social systems.
Andi Binet (they/them)
School of Community and Regional Planning, Assistant Professor
Andi 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, Andi has been a proud co-lead of the Healthy Neighbourhoods Study, a longitudinal Participatory Action Research project exploring the relationship between gentrification and community health in nine Boston-area neighbourhoods.
Melissa McHale (she/her)
Department of Forest Resources Management, Associate Professor
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
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.
Trevor Dummer is a Professor in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia and the Canadian Cancer Society Chair in Cancer Primary Prevention. He is also an Affiliated Scientist with BC Cancer and serves as the National Scientific Co-Director of the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health (CanPath), Canada’s largest prospective cohort study. Trained as a health geographer, Trevor holds a PhD in Environmental Epidemiology from Newcastle University and has advanced expertise in Geographic Information Science. His research examines how environmental, community, and neighbourhood factors influence health outcomes, with a particular focus on cancer prevention. His work explores links between environmental exposures such as radon and arsenic, the built environment, lifestyle factors, and chronic disease, and emphasizes large-scale population data and knowledge translation to inform prevention and policy.
Learn more about the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health (CanPath).
Eli Puterman is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education, School of Kinesiology, at UBC. He is the Canada Research Chair in Physical Activity and Health. Dr. Puterman’s research seeks to understand the interplay among street, aging, and exercise. His research demonstrates that physical activity is a powerful behavioural factor with the potential to delay immune aging in individuals experiencing high degrees of adversity in their lifetime. In his most recent randomized controlled trial, he demonstrated that 6 months of exercise can reverse cellular aging of the immune system in previously inactive, highly stressed adults. Currently, he is developing new intervention trials and laboratory-based studies to disentangle the extent to which both acute and long-term exercise can strengthen both psychological and biological stress responses and immune function in children and adults alike.
Partners
Dale Bracewell (he/him)
Cluster Strategic Partnerships Lead
Principal, Mobility Foresight
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.
Former Students
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 behaviour and the reduction of CO2 emissions.