Built Infrastructure is the foundation of economic and societal development. Join the Executive Director and the Faculty Director of MIT’s Mobility Initiative in exploring the challenges and solutions in evolving built infrastructure to support mobility of the future.
John Moavenzadeh is an expert and thought leader on the Future of Mobility. John is Executive Director of the MIT Mobility Initiative, a research, education, entrepreneurship and civic engagement program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he developed and co-teaches the graduate-level Mobility Ventures course. John is also Senior Advisor to Deloitte’s Future of Mobility practice and Operator Advisor LP at Assembly Ventures. John serves as an independent advisor to several companies that promise to transform transportation.
As Head of Mobility and Member of the Executive Committee of the World Economic Forum for over 15 years in Geneva and New York, John led a team that developed a portfolio of public-private initiatives, including autonomous vehicles and urban mobility, security of the international travel system, drones and the future of the air space, and advancing seamless integrated mobility. John has also served as Executive Director of the MIT International Motor Vehicle Program, an associate with Booz Allen Hamilton’s international transportation practice, and started his career as a product design engineer with Ford Motor Company in 1990.
John holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, an MS in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan, and an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School. He has completed executive management programs at China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), INSEAD and the Wharton School.
This talk describes the challenge and opportunity behind the concept of an integrated mobility system that enables the seamless flow of people and goods among multiple transportation providers and modes of transport. The talk describes the progress and setbacks toward mobility integration and explores the potential impact on the built environment of the future.
Jinhua Zhao is the Professor of Cities and Transportation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prof. Zhao integrates behavioral and computational thinking to decarbonize the world’s mobility system.
Prof. Zhao founded the MIT Mobility Initiative, coalescing the Institute’s efforts on transportation research, education, entrepreneurship, and engagement. He hosts the MIT Mobility Forum, highlighting transportation innovation from MIT and across the globe.
Prof. Zhao directs the JTL Urban Mobility Lab and Transit Lab, leading long-term collaborations with transportation authorities and operators worldwide and enabling cross-culture learning between cities in North America, Asia, and Europe.
Prof. Zhao leads the program “Mens, Manus, and Machina (M3S): How AI Impacts the Future of Work and Future of Learning” at the Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART).
He is the co-founder and chief scientist for TRAM.Global, a mobility decarbonization venture.
Research Interest
He brings behavioral science and transportation technology together to shape travel behavior, design mobility systems, and reform urban policies. He develops computational 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 establishes the behavioral foundation for transportation systems and policies.
Prof. Zhao will discuss how technology, business, and behavior drivers are changing the relationship between the built environment and the future of mobility. He’ll specifically examine the impact of High Speed Rail at the Mega-Region level, Autonomous Vehicles at the Metropolis level, and the Future of Work at the Neighborhood level through examples.