Research List of Members

Kelly Pitera

Kelly Pitera is a completing a master of science in civil engineering with a certificate in Global Trade, Transportation and Logistics. She plans to pursue a PhD at the UW as well.

Kelly holds a bachelor of science in civil engineering at Villanova University. Prior to returning to school, she was employed by Berger/ABAM Engineers, a structural and civil engineering consulting firm located in Seattle, Washington. There she was responsible for bridge and roadway design for numerous transportation and public works projects. She obtained her professional engineering (PE) license in 2005.

Kelly's research interests include freight mobility and logistics. Currently she is exploring relationships between supply chain structure and transportation resiliency. Kelly's future goals include teaching.

Outside of school, Kelly enjoys traveling, skiing, running, camping and hiking.

 

Wenjuan Zhao

Wenjuan Zhao came to University of Washington in 2007 after finishing her M.S. degree in Civil Engineering in China. Now she is pursuing her PhD program at Civil & Environmental Engineering Department and specializing in the field of Transportation Engineering. And her research interests mainly lie in port operation management and optimization, and empty container logistics. Currently, she is a research assistant and working with Professor Anne V. Goodchild on the NCRST Project to propose an improved terminal gate appointment system and evaluate the efficiency and benefits of this new system brought for both trucker and terminals.

 

Chilan Ta

Chilan comes to the University of Washington with a B.A. in Sociology from UC San Diego. She is fashioning an informal concurrent master’s program, and draws on coursework offered by the Urban Design and Planning Department, the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, and the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs. In 2010, she will graduate from the University of Washington with two master’s degrees: a Master of Urban Planning and a Master of Science in Transportation Engineering.

Chilan’s interests cross many disciplines to cover the geopolitics of transportation investments and financing; the relationships between land use, growth, and transportation improvement packages; effective communication strategies between private and public organizations for incident relief; and the life cycle of transportation solutions. On the order of ten to fifteen years post-graduation, she aims to develop experience working in both the public and private realms of regional and transportation planning and policy development with the eventual pursuit of a Ph.D.

Currently, she is Research Assistant under Professor Anne V. Goodchild, working on a TransNow and WSDOT funded project to unpack the concept of resiliency, apply it to goods movement and the freight transportation system in Washington State, and conceptualize and operationalized the relationship between the transportation infrastructure and the economy.

 

Derik Andreoli

Derik Andreoli is a doctoral candidate in geography at the University of Washington. His areas of expertise include economic geography, labor market theory, migration theory, and public policy. Derik is interested in the individual, social, and economic motives of transmigrants and the myriad ways in which transmigration can at times promote and at other times hinder the transmission of economic development from one region to another. Derik is also fascinated by the rise of supply chain management and how shifts in approaches to supply chain management impact local economies and transportation systems.

 

Sunny Rose

Sunny Rose is pursuing a MS degree in Transportation Engineering at the University of Washington in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His interests include the intermodal relationships of freight mobility and the industry’s use of existing infrastructure within the transportation network.

Sunny graduated from Colorado State University in 2002 with a BS in Civil Engineering. Prior to returning to graduate school he served in the US Naval Civil Engineer Corps for five years, including a tour in Afghanistan. Sunny holds his professional engineering license in the state of Washington.

 

Erica Wygonik

Erica Wygonik is pursuing both a Master of Science degree in Transportation Engineering in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a Master of Urban Planning degree in the College of Built Environments. She is interested in the relationship between land use and transportation and modeling of complex systems. Erica holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree from the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Cognitive Science from Dartmouth College.

Before matriculating at the University of Washington, Erica worked for Resource Systems Group, a transportation and environmental engineering consulting firm based in Vermont. A Senior Associate at RSG, she led the Microsimulation and Traffic Operations practice areas. She is a licensed professional engineer.

At the University of Washington, Erica will be studying ways to optimize the freight system and the intersection of land use and transportation policies in pursuit of her joint degree programs.

 

Past Members

Karthik Mohan
Kaori Fujisawa
Hanzhi Ding
Susan Albrecht
Li Leung