Jinhua Zhao MCP ’04, SM ’04, PhD ’09 has been appointed head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), effective July 1. Zhao is Professor of Cities and Transportation, Class of 1941, at MIT.
Making the announcement, Hashim Sarkis, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, said Zhao is a renowned transportation planner, teacher and scholar, and a world leader in imagining and shaping a better future for mobility.
Sarkis says, “Jinhua is one of those rare scholars who moves seamlessly between cutting-edge research and real-world policy.” “Their work with governments and transportation agencies around the world is a model of what MIT’s impact can look like beyond our campus.”
Zhao succeeds Professor Christopher Zegras, who has served as department head since 2020. Under his leadership, DUSP expanded opportunities for students to engage directly with communities and policy makers around the world and continued to strengthen its long-term connection between research and practice. “I want to express my gratitude to Chris Zegras for his outstanding and level-headed leadership, especially during challenging times,” says Sarkis.
After earning advanced degrees at MIT, Zhao joined the DUSP faculty. He says he found the institute’s lack of tradition and culture of sharing ideas across disciplines inspiring.
“MIT is a small school in the best sense of the word,” says Zhao. “We have fewer limitations intellectually and physically than other universities. Our ‘infinite corridor’ literally connects us to many disciplines.”
Shaping mobility systems around the world
This connectivity has been important to Zhao’s research and the programs he established at MIT. Respected as a global authority on mobility, his research has been put into practice on some of the world’s most complex mobility challenges. He and his team have prepared policy for Transport in London, Mass Transit Railways in Hong Kong and Japan Railways. His research has had a positive impact on major US transit authorities, including Boston’s MBTA, Chicago Transit Authority, and Washington’s Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. He has guided strategic planning for the mobility industry on the future of autonomous and digital mobility, and developed autonomous vehicle (AV) deployment strategies in Singapore and the Middle East.
“Every city I’ve worked with faces the same tension: technology moving faster than the institutions that are designed to operate it,” says Zhao. “My work has been about bridging that gap.”
At MIT, Zhao founded the MIT Mobility Initiative, which brings together mobility and transportation researchers from across the Institute as well as leaders in these disciplines from around the world. Zhao hosts the weekly MIT Mobility Forum via Zoom, with each discussion open to the public. What started as a small internal list of participants has grown into a global forum, attracting over 200 practitioners, policy makers and researchers from around the world every week. The considerable interest in the topic doesn’t surprise Zhao.
“No one discipline owns transportation,” says Zhao. “AI and autonomous systems are reshaping urban life faster than most institutions. The question is no longer what we know. The question is whether the people who need it most – municipal governments, transportation agencies, federal ministries – can use it when they make decisions on transportation. That’s why this platform exists.”
Zhao directs the JTL Urban Mobility Lab which unites behavioral science and transportation technology to shape travel behavior, design mobility systems, and improve transportation policies. He is also a principal principal investigator with Menace, Manus, and Machina, an MIT initiative at the intersection of artificial intelligence, the future of work, and human learning, which is developing tools and strategies for how cities, institutions, and economies can be designed to ensure AI enhancements rather than displacing the people within them.
DUSP’s global agenda
“If you look at the global agenda, what are the issues people are facing?” asks Zhao. “An aging society; AI and its impact on jobs; the energy crisis; traffic congestion. These are some of the problems that people feel connected to because they are embedded in our cities and communities. I want DUSP to engage with city leaders and share our research and insights.”
As he prepares to step into his role as department head, Zhao says he wants the research generated within DUSP to reach faster those who need it most: the planners, officials and engineers who are making decisions in cities right now. A transit authority struggling with AV integration; The city government is rethinking aging infrastructure; One leading transport ministry is paying attention to the policy implications of AI – these are the constituencies with which Zhao believes DUSP should be having an active dialogue.
“We know a lot about how cities grow, how people move and how this will change. The question is whether the people responsible for making these changes – in city hall, transport agencies, federal ministries – can access what we know, when they need it.”
