BRIEF PARTNER PROFILE
Founded in 1826, University College London (UCL) is a world leading research-led university (ranked 4th worldwide in the 2015 QS World University Rankings). UCL is the number one research university in the UK for research strength in the Research Excellence Framework 2014, which can be seen through the 32 Noble Prize winners among UCL staff and former students. The university has a strong track record in undertaking transport and energy research, with countless publications and other outputs supporting this. The UCL Energy Institute, belongs to the UCL Bartlett School and has over 60 members of staff and 50 PhD students. It brings together multidisciplinary teams, providing critical mass and capacity for large interdisciplinary projects in several areas. The school has a number of funding streams including an EPSRC Platform Grant which is awarded to “world leading” research groups. The school runs the only government funded Doctoral Training Centre in Energy Demand Reduction and hosts one of five EPSRC centres of research into end-use energy demand. One of the Institute’s core themes is Transport covering Urban Transport, Aviation and Shipping. The Transport group takes a holistic perspective, studying all motorized and non-motorized modes of transport across space and time. The Urban Transport and Energy Group (UTrEN) focuses on exploring new mobility service and Mobility as a Service in developed and developing countries. Its expertise lies on transport and behavioural models, survey design and innovative data collection techniques, big data handling, GIS, data visualization and new mobility service design. UTrEn has several research projects on the aforementioned topics, while it works closely with the industry and public authorities to make sure that the innovative solutions and methods are utilized in real-life and have an impact on society.
PROJECT INVOLVEMENT
UCL is the Scientific and Technical coordinator of the MaaS4EU project. UCL is one of the leading research teams on the MaaS concept worldwide and has already significant experience in this topic. As such, UCL is having a core role in WP1. UCL provides the Scientific-Technical Manager who is overseeing and collaborating with the Project Coordinator and the scientific and technical WP leaders to ensure the smooth operation of the project’s research activities. UCL manages all scientific and technical issues to ensure the highest level of standard is reached throughout the project.
UCL leads WP4 and WP8, and it is actively involved in WP2, WP5, WP6, WP7 and WP9 and WP10. As leader of WP4, UCL is responsible for the research conducted regarding End-Users, while it also leads T4.1 being responsible for the three-wave survey design, and T4.4 where it is going to develop the travel behaviour change models. As WP8 leader, UCL sets-up the pilots, oversees the demonstration of the MaaS4EU solution in the three pilot areas, and it is responsible for the data collection. UCL is also actively involved in the GM pilot (T8.2) and supports TFGM with the demonstration and the surveys. UCL is also in charge of T8.5, for the evaluation of the pilots and the quantification of the impact of the MaaS concept on travel behaviour, car-ownership and energy consumption. In WP5, WP7, WP9 and WP10 UCL is responsible for a number of sub-tasks. In WP5, UCL is involved with coordinating the data analytics activity (T5.3). In WP7.3 UCL heads up the creation of the data dashboards, including data visualization. In WP9, it is involved in the MaaS4EU dissemination activities. Finally, in WP10, UCL leads T10.2 and T10.3, IP rights management and commercialization plan. UCL’s overarching expertise and experience in scientific and technical research will be taken advantage of in all of the WPs and tasks UCL is part of.
KEY PERSONNEL
Dr. Maria KAMARGIANNI (Female): is the Scientific and Technical manager of MaaS4EU. She is a Lecturer in Transport and Energy and the Head of the Urban Transport and Energy Group at the UCL Energy Institute. She holds a PhD in Travel Behaviour Modelling and Decision Science, and a MSc. in Shipping, Trade and Transport form the University of the Aegean, and a BSc in Business Administration from the University of Macedonia. Her areas of research include travel behaviour, new mobility services, mobility-as-a-service (MaaS), transportation demand modelling, transportation systems analysis, market research and econometrics. She has extensive experience in survey design, sampling design, big data handling, data mining and modelling combined revealed and stated preferences discrete choice models, as well as latent variable models in which the attitudes and perceptions of decision makers are taken into account in the choice process. She has widely published in the academic and professional literature. She is the Project Coordinator of several MaaS related projects, such as: De-MaaS, SMaaS, SimMaaS. Dr. Kamargianni for her research and the methodologies she developed, has received some of the most outstanding awards worldwide in the transport sector, such as: 1. the Bronze medal in the pan-European contest for early stage researchers (by the Transport Research Arena; Brussels, 2010), 2. the Best Student Paper Award in Choice Modelling ( by the Elsevier Journal of Choice Modelling; Sydney, 2013), and 3. the Ryuichi Kitamura Best Paper Award in Travel Analysis Methods (by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine – Transportation Research Board; Washington DC, 2014). Dr. Kamargianni is a member in several conference standing committees, such as the Transport Research Board (TRB), International Association of Travel Behaviour (IATBR), World Conference in Transport Research (WCTR). She also leads the working group “End-Users Perspective” of the MaaS.Alliance. She has been a keynote speaker and a moderator in several events about MaaS, such as the CIVITAS Forum, the IRU annual meeting, the TfL (Transport for London) and the UK Department for Transport events about MaaS, the MaaS workshops of the TravelSpirit open source community. She works closely with the public authorities and the industry to transfer her research outputs to the real life.
Ms. Melinda MATYAS (Female): PhD researcher in Energy and Transport at the UCL Energy Institute, Urban Transport and Energy research group. She holds a BA in Economics from Boston University (US) and an MSc in Economics and Policy of Energy and the Environment from UCL (UK). Her PhD research focuses on analysing the demand for Mobility as a Service systems in London and is funded by EPSRC. She has been concentrating on understanding and analysing the various elements of MaaS from the very early days of the concept. Ms. Matyas was heavily involved in the FS-MaaS project, which was one of the first overarching studies on the feasibility of MaaS. She was also a co-author on an academic journal article critically reviewing new mobility services and MaaS; work which has also been presented at many conferences and workshops. She has experience in travel behaviour research including survey design and choice modelling with both revealed and stated preference information. As part of her doctoral research, she works with and expands on a state-of-the-art smartphone based travel survey tool. This includes customising the base survey to the case study city, adding a stated preference experiment and connecting and exploiting open API information. She also has knowledge in cleaning large travel behaviour data sets (for example the London Travel Demand Survey) as well as conducting statistical analysis and building models with them.
Mr. Weibo Li (Male): PhD Researcher in Urban Transport and Energy Group at UCL Energy Institute. His research focuses on modelling transport mode choice behaviour, forecasting transport demand and developing urban mobility solutions. He has plentiful research experience in survey design, sampling, data handling and travel behavior modelling as well as project management. He designed a number of surveys to study the market demand towards mobility services including the one with 15,000 sophistically sampled respondents collecting both revealed preference and stated preference mode choice data. He is also the co-author of Feasibility study for “Mobility as a Service” concept in London, which was one of the earliest researches on MaaS related concept and involved the management of London Transport Demand Survey data.