Julia is a Brazilian Ph.D. student in Transportation Engineering in the Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment (CITE) at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Before joining the Ph.D. program, she obtained her master’s degree in Transportation Engineering from Universidade de São Paulo, where she also completed her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. Her main research interests are urban freight and passenger transportation. Her goal is to enhance transportation efficiency in cities, improving livability and reducing environmental impacts. Besides her academic work, Julia is the president of the Women in Transportation (WTS) student chapter at her university, and she volunteers giving online physics classes to low-income teenagers in Brazil.

In grad school, Julia has been involved in several multidisciplinary research projects in which she had the opportunity to broaden her experience and knowledge in transportation. She has participated in several stages of research including data collection, behavioral modeling, processing of archival GPS data, development of state-of-the-art simulation tools, among others.

Julia’s September 11th memorial program project focuses on helping NYMTC to update the Socioeconomic and Demographic (SED) forecasting and Zonal Allocation Process (ZAP) models for the New York Metropolitan Region. She will research and evaluate new methods found in the literature and in practice on other MPOs. The ultimate objective is to recommend enhancements or alternatives to the existing SED and ZAP models that would enable NYMTC’s staff to independently develop future forecasts.