Do you have research expertise in Choice Modelling and/or Econometrics? Are you interested in bridging different techniques to advance the state-of-the-art transport models and make a real-world impact?

Shared mobility solutions have been widely studied in the past two decades, but despite their potential to improve efficiency and affordability of travel, they have remained fairly limited in scope and geographical spread and have not significantly reduced the use and ownership of private vehicles. Dial-a-ride is a specific type of shared mobility tool, involving a door-to-door service usually directed to people who cannot access public transport. Scaling up such service to a wider audience in an efficient, sustainable and affordable way is the challenge that we would like you help us address. 

Part of this challenge consists in engaging relevant stakeholders and understanding people’s preferences and expectations towards such services. This is essential to ensure that the so that their routing, scheduling and pricing can be designed to maximise demand and ensure financial sustainability in the long term. Both qualitative and quantitative data will need to be collected and analysed with choice modelling and econometric techniques to obtain robust insights that will feed into the mathematical modelling needed to design the service.

The project within which you would work, named “A scaled and sustainable demand responsive transport service”, is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of the UKRI and led by Prof. Rym M’Hallah (King’s College London). As a member of the team, you will be working with Prof Julia Bennel and Dr Chiara Calastri and be based at the Leeds University Business School with cross-university collaborations through the Institute for Transport Studies and Choice Modelling Centre (CMC). You will also collaborate with Prof Christine Currie (University of Southampton) and participate to project meetings in Leeds, London and Southampton.

We are looking for a committed, highly motivated and innovative individual with econometrics and/or choice modelling background to work in this exciting research project. You are expected to contribute to designing and conducting novel data collection and developing choice models in the context of dial-a-ride services. You will also be expected to produce methodological contributions in bridging choice modelling and large scale optimization.  As this is a multi-faceted research project, you will be able to contribute to individual components of the work as well as helping to shape the direction of the research according to your own interests and background. You will be expected to take academic ownership of large parts of the programme and make a lasting contribution to the field. 

To explore the post further or for any queries you may have, please contact:

Dr Chiara Calastri, Email: [email protected]