Ding Wang on Curiosity in Research

“I’m so curious about where people go and when they travel,” she says. “The transportation network is amazing.”

This curiosity has served Wang well, and she has followed it down multiple diverse research pathways. Her publication list reads like she swallowed the entire section of the transportation engineering library, with titles like “Impact of COVID-19 Behavioral Inertia on Reopening Strategies for New York City Transit”, “Multi-agent simulation-based virtual test bed ecosystem: MATSim-NYC,” and “Modeling and Analysis Strategies for Leveraging Ride-Sourcing Services in Hurricane Evacuation.”

While at C2SMART, she participated in the development of the virtual testbed, MATSim-NYC — “An amazing research project,” she enthuses — led by Professor Chow and Ozbay. She also collaborated with Cornell University on a series of studies to respond to the COVID-19 emergency. And she worked with Dr. Ozbay on the hurricane evacuation planning research for emergency management.