Headliners’ Presentation Slides & Recordings:
Dr. Hai Yang – The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Slides and Recording)
Building Urban Air Mobility: Technology, Policy, and Public Perception in China’s Greater Bay Area
Tessa Sanchez – Uber (Recording)
Electrifying Ride-Hailing: Global Evidence from Uber’s EV Driver Survey
Dr. Tim Schwanen – University of Oxford (Slides and Recording)
Towards Just Transitions in Urban Transportation
Dr. Marta Gonzalez – University of California, Berkeley (Slides and Recording)
Towards a Science of Cities: A Complex Systems Approach
More detailed information on our headliners can be found below.
Best Paper Awards
Coming soon!
EASTERN HEMISPHERE
DAY 1 Eastern: Wednesday, August 12
Session 1: Ride-Hailing & Emerging Mobility (Recording)
Session 2: Traffic Safety & Crash Analysis (Recording)
Session 3: Public Transit Planning & Operations (Recording)
Session 4:Freight, Logistics, & Ports (Recording)
Session 5: Built Environment, Accessibility, & Equity (Recording)
Session 6: Intelligent Transportation Systems & Traffic Operations (Recording)
Session 7: Emergency Management & Transportation Resilience (Recording)
Session 8: Recent Research at Australia’s National Transp Research Org (Recording)
DAY 2 Eastern: Thursday, August 13
Session 9 : Electric Vehicles & Charging Systems (Recording)
Session 10: Shared Mobility & Micromobility (Recording)
Session 11: Freight Operations & Supply Chains (Recording)
Session 12: Urban Mobility in China (Recording)
Session 13: Sustainability, Environment, & Carbon (Recording)
Session 14: Advances in Mobility, Planning, & Operations (Recording)
Session 15: Travel Behavior & Choice Modeling (Recording)
WESTERN HEMISPHERE
DAY 1 Western: Wednesday, August 12
Session 1: Active Transportation & Shared Mobility (Recording)
Session 2: Inclusive Mobility, Aging, & Accessibility (Recording)
Session 3: Transportation Safety & Roadway Design (Recording)
Session 4: AI, Machine Learning, & Data Science for Transportation (Recording)
Session 5: Traffic Operations, Control, & Autonomous Systems (Recording)
Session 6: Traffic Prediction, Simulation, & Computational Methods (Recording)
Session 7: Travel Behavior, Choice, & Demand Analysis (Recording)
DAY 2 Western: Thursday, August 13
Session 8: Public Transit Planning & Operations (Recording)
Session 9: Electric Vehicles & Sustainable Freight (Recording)
Session 10: Transportation Equity & Community Mobility (Recording)
Session 11: Electric Vehicles & Charging Infrastructure (Recording)
Session 12: Transportation Resilience, Climate, & Emergency Management (Recording)
Session 13: Network Analysis & Infrastructure Systems (Recording)
Session 14: Public Participation, Policy, & Human Factors (Recording)
Session 15: Behavioral Modeling & Decision Analytics in Transportation (Recording)
BTR 8 Headliners
EASTERN track: Wednesday, August 12 at 10:00 CST / 11:00 JST / 12:00 AEST / 02:00 UTC
Building Urban Air Mobility: Technology, Policy, and Public Perception in China’s Greater Bay Area
Dr. Hai Yang – The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
ABSTRACT: This presentation examines the low-altitude economy, powered by drones and eVTOLs, across three dimensions. First, it introduces core concepts and market opportunities in Mainland China and Hong Kong, outlining key technologies and adoption barriers. Second, it showcases our team’s drone solutions for urban inspection, environmental monitoring, and parcel delivery in smart cities. Finally, based on a Strategic Public Policy Research Project in the Greater Bay Area, it integrates stakeholder interviews and user surveys to identify regulatory and infrastructural gaps, offering actionable policy recommendations for sustainable regional growth.
EASTERN track: Thursday, August 13, at 10:00 CST / 11:00 JST / 12:00 AEST / 02:00 UTC
Electrifying Ride-Hailing: Global Evidence from Uber’s EV Driver Survey
Tessa Sanchez – Uber
ABSTRACT: Electrifying high-mileage ride-hailing vehicles can deliver outsized emissions reductions, but significant barriers to adoption remain. This presentation will open with an overview of Uber’s global electrification efforts, followed by key findings from Uber’s fifth annual Global EV Driver Survey of nearly 20,000 drivers across 13 markets. The survey explores EV adoption, charging behavior, operating economics, vehicle purchasing decisions, and the barriers that continue to shape drivers’ transition to electric vehicles. The findings offer practical insights into where research, policy, industry, and platform interventions can help accelerate the transition to electric mobility.
WESTERN track: Wednesday, August 12, at 10:00 CDT / 11:00 EDT / 17:00 CEST / 15:00 UTCTowards Just Transitions in Urban Transportation
Dr. Tim Schwanen – University of Oxford
ABSTRACT: The notion of just transition has become very popular across the sustainability science and policy communities, but the term means different things to different people. This is, to a lesser extent, also true for the fields of transportation research and policy. This presentation will first review different elaborations of the just transition concept in the transportation context, and then argue that just transitions in urban transportation demand that research embraces uncertainty in what just is and can become, and prioritise epistemic, procedural and recognition justice over distributive justice. These arguments are elaborated using my ongoing research in the UK, Africa and Asia.
WESTERN track: Thursday, August 13, 10:00 CDT / 11:00 EDT / 17:00 CEST / 15:00 UTC
Towards a Science of Cities: A Complex Systems Approach
Dr. Marta Gonzalez– University of California, Berkeley
ABSTRACT: Cities are complex systems whose behavior emerges from interactions among people, institutions, and infrastructure. This talk presents a data-driven framework grounded in complex systems science to uncover unifying principles governing urban dynamics. Using large-scale mobility, traffic, emissions, and financial transaction data, I examine traffic phase transitions, quantify the role of vehicle kilometers traveled in CO₂ emissions, and reveal how mobility patterns reshape urban structure during disruptive events. Finally, I show how credit card transactions encode lifestyles and social organization. Together, these findings advance a systems-based science of cities to inform resilient, sustainable urban planning.