An Assessment of Data, Tools, and Metrics for Equity in Decisions About Surface Transportation Investments (2025)
Chapter: Appendix: Study Committee Biographical Information
Appendix
Study Committee Biographical Information
Deb A. Niemeier (NAE) (Chair) is the Clark Distinguished Chair in Energy and Sustainability at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and an affiliate professor in the College of Information Studies and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science. Her research focuses on the identification of vulnerable populations and environmental and health disparities in the built environment. She studies the risks associated with outcomes in the intersection of social and demographic characteristics, housing, and infrastructure with environmental hazards such as air quality, disasters, and more broadly, climate change. Her international development work is aimed at agricultural sustainability and her current education research is focused on data science in engineering and the operational challenges of K–12 infrastructure. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for “distinguished contributions to energy and environmental science study and policy development,” a Guggenheim Fellow for foundational work on pro bono service in engineering, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2020. She has received the Perry L. McCarty Founders Award (2002) and the 2023 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science.
Elizabeth Alden recently retired after 23 years with the metropolitan planning organization (MPO) serving Tampa, Florida, where she served as the executive director of an award-winning team of planners with a vision of a well-connected, prosperous, healthy, and equitable community.
She spearheaded initiatives that empower residents to reshape their communities, including the first multijurisdictional Vision Zero Action Plan in the United States, and the first multi-MPO growth scenarios visioning collaboration in the Tampa Bay region. As the architect of Tampa/Hillsborough’s Imagine 2040 Transportation Plan, she combined performance metrics and creative public engagement to refocus attention on essential “bread and butter” infrastructure investments, establishing the structure for a successful local sales tax popular referendum in 2018. Her team’s Nondiscrimination and Equity Plan was featured in the American Planning Association’s 2022 State of Transportation Planning report as a best practice. In 2017 she was appointed as a member of the National Cooperative Highway Research Program Panel (TRB/NCHRP 08-36) on Research for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Standing Committee on Planning. She was the founding chair of the Florida MPO Advisory Council’s Noteworthy Practices Committee. She served as a best-practice presenter in several Federal Highway Administration peer-exchange programs and guidebook panels and authored portions of the American Institute of Certified Planners’ first exam to certify transportation planning specialists. She has worked in the public and private sectors as a professional planner since 1994 and holds a master’s degree in urban planning from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs and a bachelor’s degree in environmental design and architecture from North Carolina State University.
Jesus M. Barajas is an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis. His research on transportation equity addresses how systems of inequities influence travel behavior and how planners and policymakers respond. He has led projects on topics that include the travel behavior of marginalized population groups, bicycling safety, and the use of equity data and metrics in transportation decision making. He serves as a member of the Standing Committee on Equity in Transportation for the Transportation Research Board and is a member of the editorial board for the Transportation Research Record. Dr. Barajas holds a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley.
Deanna Belden is a senior research scientist at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) in the Mobility Division. She joined TTI in November 2024 to apply practitioner expertise to transportation research, analysis, and evaluation. Previously, she was with the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) for 25 years, and served as the director of performance, risk and investment analysis for 13 years. In this role she led MnDOT’s Performance Management Program, which includes
the online performance dashboard, state and federal performance measure reporting, and new measure development. She and her team were responsible for the implementation of MnDOT’s Enterprise Risk Management program to integrate risk assessments into MnDOT’s processes, evaluate organization-level risks, and for economic forecasts and analyses. She is a member of the Transportation Research Board’s Standing Committee on Performance Management (AJE20). She has served on various panels convened by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program on performance measurement and management topics. While at MnDOT, she was active in the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ Committee on Performance Based Management, most recently as the founding co-chair of the Task Force on Emerging Performance Areas. Her international contributions include serving as the working group co-chair for the PIARC Technical Committee 1.1 Performance of Transport Administrations. She received an M.S. in urban and regional planning and an M.A. in economics from the University of Iowa and a B.A. in economics from the University of Oregon. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners.
Ahmed El-Geneidy is a professor at the School of Urban Planning at McGill University. He is currently serving on the board of directors for the regional public transport planning authority in Montreal Autorité régionale de transport métropolitain. In 2007 he established the Transportation Research at McGill (TRAM) research laboratory known for generating practice-ready land use and transport research that impacted communities in Canada and around the world. He is the co-editor-in-chief of Transport Reviews and the editor of Transportation. He has published more than 170 academic articles in peer-reviewed academic journals through his collaborations with students in the TRAM research laboratory in the areas of land use and transport planning, public transport operations and planning, travel behavior analysis concentrating on the use of motorized and nonmotorized modes of transport and their impacts on health and well-being, and measurements of accessibility in urban contexts. He has a special interest in measuring and understanding the transport needs of disadvantaged populations. He received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architectural engineering from Alexandria University, Egypt, and holds a Ph.D. in urban studies from the Nohad A. Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University in Oregon.
Ronald C. Hall is a transportation program manager at the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute at North Dakota State University where he is also a co-director of the Northern Tribal Technical Assistance Program, assistant director for Tribal Transportation Programs, and tribal liaison
for the University Transportation Center for Transformative Infrastructure Preservation and Sustainability. He is also the president of Bubar & Hall Consulting and served previously as the principal investigator and director of the Tribal Technical Assistance Program at Colorado State University. His expertise is in understanding and supporting the needs of tribal transportation programs. He helped to create and chaired the Transportation Research Board standing committee on Native American Transportation Issues. He is a recipient of the Multiethnic Distinguished Service Award from Colorado State University and the Federal Highway Administration’s Service Award. He served as a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on Data, Metrics, and Analytic Methods for Assessing Equity Impacts of Surface Transportation Funding Programs. He has a B.S. in criminal justice studies and sociology from Augustana College and a J.D. from the William Mitchell College of Law.
Anna Roach is the executive director and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC), whose vision is to create One Great Region through its mission to foster thriving communities for all within the Atlanta region through collaborative and data-informed planning and investments. As the executive director and CEO, she manages the agency’s $125 million operating budget and leads a talented team that works with local governments and community partners to improve quality of life in the Atlanta region. In addition to developing and maintaining long-range, comprehensive, regional plans in the areas of transportation, aging, workforce development, natural resources, and urban area security, ARC deploys nearly $3 billion of investments across the Atlanta region on an annual basis. She is a member of the Atlanta Rotary Club, the International Women’s Forum Georgia, and the Women’s Transportation Seminar. She also serves on the Leadership Council of the Board for Drawdown Georgia, the Executive Committee of the Board for Learn4Life, the board of the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation, and the board of Council for Quality Growth. She has been named one of the 100 most influential Georgians by Georgia Trend, one of the 500 most powerful Atlanta leaders by Atlanta Magazine, one of 22 leaders to watch in 2022 by the Atlanta Business Chronicle and is one of Engineering Georgia’s top 100 Most Influential Women in Georgia Engineering. Prior to joining ARC as its first female CEO in the 75-year history of the organization, she served as the chief operating officer for Fulton County Government. Her earlier career as an attorney included roles in both the private and public sectors. She holds a J.D. from St. John’s University School of Law and received a B.A. in political science from the State University of New York, College at Cortland.
Kelly C. Rodgers is a senior transportation planner in the Climate Friendly and Equitable Communities program at the Oregon Department of Transportation. She is also visiting scholar at the Transportation Research and Education Center at Portland State University and the owner and principal of Streetsmart Planning, LLC, a consultancy dedicated to integrating climate, health, and equity into transportation planning. She has 22 years of city planning experience working in transportation, green infrastructure, community design, and renewable energy. She is the chair of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Standing Committee on Health and Transportation and the co-chair of ITE’s People-Centered Mobility Great Idea Group. She is also a member of the Transportation Research Board’s Committee on Transportation and Public Health (AME70) and is the co-founder and a member of the American Planning Association’s Health Equity and Planning Interest Group. She has a doctorate in urban studies from Portland State University, where her research focused on the use and influence of municipal health–related transportation indicators. Additional research interests include transportation as a determinant of health; context-based transportation planning, design, and travel behavior; and the role, nature, and quality of evidence in transportation decision making. She also has a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of British Columbia and a bachelor’s degree in urban and regional planning from Miami University.
Gregory Rowangould is an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Vermont and the director of the University of Vermont Transportation Research Center. He is an expert in modeling transportation systems and travel behavior, transportation policy evaluation, and mobile source emission and air quality analysis. His research focuses on understanding how the design and operation of transportation systems and transportation policy affect the sustainability of communities, public health, and equity. Since moving to Vermont, he has focused greater attention on the transportation needs of smaller cities and rural communities where there are unique sustainability and equity challenges. He is currently a member of the Transportation Research Board’s Transportation Energy Committee and the associate editor of Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment. He holds a Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from the University of California, Davis, an M.S. in resource economics and policy from the University of Maine, and a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Maine.
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