Jinhua Zhao

Jinhua Zhao is the Associate Professor of City and Transportation Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prof. Zhao brings behavioral science and transportation technology together to shape travel behavior, design mobility system, and reform urban policies. He develops methods to sense, predict, nudge, and regulate travel behavior and designs multimodal mobility systems that integrate automated and shared mobility with public transport. He sees transportation as a language to describe a person, characterize a city, and understand an institution and aims to establish the behavioral foundation for transportation systems and policies. 

Prof. Zhao directs the JTL Urban Mobility Lab and Transit Lab at MIT and leads long-term research collaborations with major transportation authorities and operators worldwide, including London, Chicago, Hong Kong, and Singapore. He is the co-director of the Mobility Systems Center of the MIT Energy Initiative, and the director of the MIT Mobility Initiative. He very much enjoys working with students.