Tom van Vuren has been Chair of Modelling World since its inception in 2006. Operating at the interface of academic robustness and practical pragmatism, he is always on the look-out for better ways to collect data, enhance the efficiency of methods and improve accessibility of transport model results.

He is Regional Director for the UK and Europe at Veitch Lister Consulting, a Visiting Professor at the University of Leeds, and a Chartered Transport Planning Professional.

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Chris brings nearly 20 years’ experience of transport modelling, including emissions modelling to the commission His consultancy work has recently been heavily involved with helping Sheffield and Rotherham develop their Clean Air Zone strategy both with the modelling element and the Business Case Development work.  He has also been involved in several other studies featuring a emissions analysis component.  He is also jointly responsible for the maintenance and enhancement of SYSTRA’s emissions modelling software ENEVAL.

In addition to his experience with emissions modelling Chris is an has extensive modelling experience including demand, highway and public transport modelling and brings a strong numerate background to projects.. He also has considerable experience of programming in many software packages.  

Mike is an Associate with Steer, a consultancy specialising in infrastructure, cities, and transport. After studying Civil Engineering and following an initial career in project management and management consulting, Mike later returned to university to study an MSc in Transport Planning and Engineering at Leeds ITS. Here, he developed an interest in transport modelling, and particularly land-use transport interaction modelling (LUTI) - which he attributes to playing too much of the computer game SimCity in his formative years! Mike then joined Steer, where he has worked extensively with and is now the market lead for Steer’s ‘Urban Dynamic Model’ – a LUTI model based on System Dynamics.

Benjamin is an Associate at Systra Dublin with over 10 years’ experience in transport planning. Most of his work is related to the development and calibration of strategic regional transport models for the Irish National Transport Authority (NTA). Benjamin also worked on several transport schemes appraisal projects in Ireland (Bus Connects, Dublin MetroLink, Greater Dublin Area Transport Strategy).

Prior to joining SYSTRA, Benjamin spent three years working for a private French railway freight operator, where he was managing train drivers and also held a train driver licence!

Paul is an independent transport modeller with 28 years’ experience delivering projects the world over.

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Paul is currently engaged on the NEOM future city project providing a valuable mobility evidence base to support the evolution of NEOM’s mobility design. NEOM is a game changer, with person-centric living at its heart. Building cities and spaces that serve people’s mobility needs and also deliver on the planet’s agenda should be the new norm.

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Paul also provides strategy and in-depth modelling advice to public transport agencies, consultancy partners, OEMs, government agencies and investors in the mobility sector.

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Dr. Peter Vovsha leads the travel modeling practice at Bentley Systems where he guides travel modeling methodology research and development. Peter has spent the majority of his career advancing travel modeling theory and practice and has numerous publications in such fields as discrete choice models, regional model system design, behavioral research, and activity-based modeling.  He is the main architect of the Agent software developed by Bentley Systems to support a wide range of advanced agent-based and activity-based models.

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Dr. Vovsha led the conceptual design and pioneered practical applications of advanced agent-based, activity-based, and tour-based travel models for such major cities as New York, Atlanta, San-Francisco, Phoenix, Chicago, Los Angeles, Columbus, Cincinnati, San Diego, Jerusalem, Montreal, Ottawa, Singapore. He is an internationally recognized expert in Agent-based and activity-based models He has been also intensively working in the fields of road pricing, travel time reliability, and integrated microsimulation models while managing large-scale research projects for the US Transportation Research Board (TRB).  

Michael is PTV’s technical director for the Northwest Europe Region, leading a team which supports PTV customers in innovative applications of its software.

He has a background in mathematics and strategic multi-modal variable demand modelling, which is why he enjoys any opportunity he can get to delve into models and offer his advice.

David Milner MEng is the Deputy Director at urban design enterprise Create Streets and is focusing on how streets and places interact with a view to tackling the climate emergency having authored The Bin Lorry Effect and Computer Says Road.

Previously David worked as an officer and pilot in the Royal Air Force. David has a Master of Engineering from Oxford University and a level 5 Diploma from the Institute of Leadership and Management. David is a member of the Academy of Urbanism and sits on the design review for Somerset West and Taunton.

Alberto is a senior transport modeller at Connected Places Catapult and civil engineer. His is experienced in strategic transport modelling, choice modelling, GIS and data analysis. He works on the introduction of new technologies such as drones and autonomous shared taxis to promote sustainability, economic growth and achieve social benefits

Dr. Luis Willumsen is a Managing Partner of Nommon Solutions and Technologies a company specialised in the use of big data and Artificial Intelligence to deliver advanced transport insights. He has over 35 years of experience as a consultant, transport modeller and planner. He is an internationally recognised authority in Transport and Traffic modelling. He is co-author of “Modelling Transport” a book published by Wiley and now in its fourth edition. He has also published “Better Traffic and Revenue Forecasting”, dealing with the critical task of delivering demand and revenue projections for transport concessions. He was a researcher and lecturer at Leeds University and University College London. He was a Board Director of Steer Davies Gleave for 20 years leaving in 2009 to develop his own consultancy. He has focussed on the future impact of new mobility, Agent Based models and how best to deal with deep uncertainty and risk. He is also Visiting Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering at University College London.

James Key is a highly experienced transport modelling consultant in the UK, working closely with government-funded connected and autonomous vehicle initiatives, and modelling impact studies.

James is a member of the Chartered Institute of Highways and Transportation, the Transport Planning Society and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.

Stephen Joseph is a transport policy consultant, specialising in urban and local issues and in smart transport. He was Chief Executive of Campaign for Better Transport (formerly Transport 2000) from 1988 to 2018. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Hertfordshire’s Smart Mobility Unit since December 2018, having received an honorary doctorate from the University in November 2010.

At present, Stephen is a trustee and chair of the Foundation for Integrated Transport. He is a director of the Transport for New Homes project, which the Foundation established. He also chairs the Smart Transport board for Bauer Media and is an adviser to the Rail Devolution Network. He was awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 1996 for services to transport and the environment.

Dustin Carlino is a software developer at the Alan Turing Institute. His main project is A/B Street, an open source platform for helping people rapidly prototype and communicate ideas for reducing car use in cities by designing low-traffic neighborhoods, sketching out cycle networks, and watching traffic simulations. He also maintains libraries for working with OpenStreetMap data.

Keeley joined WSP in November 2020 as a graduate with a background in physics. She has since been a part of several carbon tool projects and has developed a strong interest in decarbonisation work in conjunction with strategic modelling.

Paul Byron heads WSP’s Strategic Modelling team in Birmingham and specialises in bespoke applications of data and models.  During his 32 year career he has advised clients on studies from town centre to multi-national in scale, exploring innovative and resourceful ways of making better use of the evidence base for demand forecasting, transport decarbonisation , road pricing and active travel mode shift. 

He is currently working with colleagues in developing tools for assessing the impacts of transport interventions on decarbonisation and congestion with a number of public sector authorities across the UK.

More than 19 years’ experience working as a transport economist and transport modeller, focusing on the use of modelling techniques to address freight and maritime transport issues.

Chris is a transport economist who specialises in quantitative analysis of freight markets, including transport modelling, statistics, trade forecasting, demand, revenue and income forecasting and simulation. An expert in freight transport modelling, he has a degree in Physics and a Masters in Transport Studies, and previously worked as a modeller at the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory.

Chris is the Technical Director at MDS Transmodal, working for public and private sector clients on projects across all modes of transport and maintaining and developing in-house transport models such as the GB Freight Model (GBFM) and the European Container Port Demand Model (ECPDM).

James Hulse is a data scientist for the Leeds institute for Data Analytics (LIDA) on the Data Scientist Development Programme. James is currently working on the openinfra project looking to add value to open access datasets, with a specific focus on transport infrastructure data from the OpenStreetMap (OSM) database. OSM is a collaborative, open project to create a free, editable geographic database of the world.

James completed an integrated master’s for the study of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Sheffield, conducting a thesis on an investigation into event and topic detection algorithms using social media streams under supervision of the Natural Language Processing (NLP) research group within the Department of Computer Science.

Nila Sari leads the development of modelling guidance in the Department for Transport’s Transport Analysis Guidance (TAG). She is currently working with modelling experts to review and update the guidance. She has over 20 years’ experience in transport modelling, including reviewing projects that explore the use of agent-based and activity-based models, as well as the development of the innovative cycling assignment model and London congestion charging modelling.

Mark is a Principal Analyst in the Transport Assurance Modelling and Economics (TAME) team within Transport for the North (TfN), managing the development and support of the TfN’s traditional transport models, that form part of the TfN Analytical Framework. Mark’s team are responsible for the Northern Rail Modelling System (NoRMS), Northern Highway Assignment Model (NoHAM) and the Northern Transport Modelling System (NorTMS).

Mark has been involved in the transport planning and modelling industry for fifteen years, with experience in both the public and private sector. His extensive experience has focused on the technical delivery of strategic modelling projects and development of transport models for several cities in the UK. With a previous emphasis on highway assignment modelling, since joining TfN Mark has expanded that experience to include Public Transport modelling. He’s currently engaged in helping the Department for Transport with the Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) Strategic Outline Business Case, and assisting other TfN Directorates, and their Local Partners, to model and appraise rail, and highway, schemes across the North.

Wei has sixteen years of experience in transport modelling and planning. Wei joined Transport for the North (TfN) in 2018, where she is responsible for technical management and assurance support on TfN programmes. Wei is leading the freight modelling requirements and development, which is as part of the TfN’s Analytical Framework to deliver an evidence base for freight assessment in the North.

Rosa Félix is an urban cycling mobility researcher at CERIS - University of Lisbon and member of U-Shift lab. She holds a PhD in Transportation Systems by the MIT Portugal program, and was a Visiting Scholar in Portland State University in 2017/18. She is currently working on projects in collaboration with the Municipality of Lisbon and the Lisbon Metro Department of Transport.

Rosa is skilled in GIS and R softwares, and loves web mapping.

Dr Tom Mclenachan is a Senior Policy Advisor in the Infrastructure Carbon team at the Department for Transport, UK. His work focusses on driving consistent whole life carbon assessment in infrastructure, building carbon management capability and supporting carbon reduction strategies in DfT and across Government.

Devrim Kara is a transport planner and PTV Group Director for UK & Ireland.

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He is passionate about transport modelling and always strives to innovate in the applications of software and modelling techniques.

He is always keen to support the modelling community and especially students and young professionals that are interested in a career in transport planning.

Rebecca is the Analysis Manager for the TAME team within Transport for the North (TfN), managing the development and support of much of the TfN analytical framework, including Northern Economy and Land Use Model (NELUM), Northern Transport Modelling System (NorTMS) and Northern Model Integration Tools (NorMIT)s. She has a background in strategic transport modelling, including the development of NorTMS for which she was awarded the New Master of Modelling Award 2018.

Mingfei is a principal consultant at Steer with a background in land use and transport interaction modelling and urban economic modelling. Her strong technical skills such as data analysis, computing and programming have always contributed to developing innovative and robust analytical tools for clients. Previously as a researcher, she carried out a variety of rigorous data-based analyses and primary and secondary research. She has produced a variety of publications on urban economics and policy analysis, some of which are in the top journals in these fields.

Sandhya is a senior transport modeller at Connected Places Catapult. With over 12 years of experience in public and private sectors she has been involved in developing travel demand forecasting models in the UK, Middle East and India. In her current role as a technical lead for one of the Innovate UK funded projects, she developed mode choice models to explore consumer’s behaviour towards new modes of transport like shared autonomous vehicles. She is also involved in working towards net zero emissions using transport models and user-centric designs.

Dr Patrizia Franco is Principal Demand Modeller at Connected Places Catapult with over 16 years’ experience in  transport planning and modelling, interested in innovative applications to holistically assess carbon footprint of transport systems and support future mobility policy interventions.

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Since she joined the Catapult in 2015, she has been technical lead for CRD projects to improve the knowledge base around data-driven demand agent-based modelling tools to test urban and rural mobility, shaping a portfolio of projects which developed innovative approaches using highly disaggregated mobile network data.

Over the last four years, she has worked with the DfT on new methodologies for next generation tools for strategic transport modelling, looking at demand agent-based modelling at large-scale, activity-based modelling using big data to explore the new trends and technologies for future of mobility in urban and rural areas.

Collins is Chartered Mathematician (CMath) and a member of the European Mathematical Society (EMS). Collins has many years’ experience in developing and applying transport models across the UK, Australia, Middle East and Africa and is an experienced project manager.  He has contributed to the development and enhancement of modelling techniques and has several published papers in leading academic journals in Transportation Science to his credit. Collins is currently leading the on-going proof of concept work on activity based model (ABM) for London in TfL.

Luis is part of TfL since May 2016, working in Strategic Modelling for Network Performance – Modelling and Visualisation Team as a Lead Transport Modeller (acting).

He has been involved in the traffic and transportation industry for the past 13 years, where he has gained a varied experience in both private and public sectors. Since joining TfL Luis has used and developed extensively the ONE Model (Operation Network Evaluator) and collaborated with NUMBAT (TfL’s Timetable based assignment for London’s rail demand reporting).

Nadia is a chartered transport planning professional specialising in multi-modal transport modelling and transport business case development.

We live in exciting times when transportation sector is rapidly changing due to digitalisation, automation, and a shift from fossil fuel to renewable energy. I am delighted to chair Freight session at which we can discuss new challenges and opportunities the new developments bring to modelling of freight.

Leon Suijs is a Traffic Management consultant for Goudappel in The Netherlands. Leon is passionate about traffic modelling and believes that digital twins can help to improve traffic management to achieve cities which are better accessible, more attractive to live in and more sustainable.

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Leon is driven by data and modelling techniques which form the keystones for these developments.

Nick Cohn is Head of Product at Teralytics. He has worked in the transport and mobility fields as a planner, modeller, consultant as well as a product manager. The common thread in his career has been his focus on human mobility data and its transformation into essential information for decision-making.

At Teralytics, his mandate is to lead the creation of products and services that help cities, transport operators, planners and modellers make better decisions faster - utilising the most comprehensive and up-to-date mobility information available. Critically, Nick believes that the ability to measure the impact of those decisions is paramount at the time when mobility is increasingly dynamic.

Carles leads Aimsun professional services in the UK. Based in London, he applies his deep knowledge of transport modelling and engineering to international flagship modelling projects and real-time simulation projects, such as the award-winning NEVFMA environmental traffic management project in Oxford, UK.

Philippe is Technical Director at Citi Logik ensuring customers get value from People Movement Analytics using Mobile Network Data.  He has 20 years experience in transport modelling and has been instrumental in making Mobile Network Data the data of choice for Transport Modelling and wider smart mobility use cases.

Bob Hickish is a Senior Transport Consultant at City Science where he has been their technical lead for a range of data and modelling projects focused on decarbonization.  Prior to this,  Bob obtained a PhD in rail network optimization and authored multiple papers on this theme as a post-doctoral researcher.

Rhiannon is a Technical Director at WSP with almost 20 years’ experience in Transport Modelling, Traffic Engineering and Transport Planning.

She has a particular passion for unlocking innovation through collaboration and understanding how our transport models can answer the future ‘What If?’ questions that changes in mobility are bringing about. She has been involved in a wide range of projects in the public and private sector, as well as government funded, industry-led research programmes relating to Connected and Autonomous Vehicles.

She has recently joined WSP in the UK as the next step in a varied career spanning both consultancy and applied research and development.

Chris is a freight and maritime transport economist with over 20 years’ experience in the UK and across Europe working on the impact of policy on the freight transport and logistics sector, examining strategic issues for freight and logistics businesses and considering the economic and commercial feasibility of freight infrastructure and services. A strong communicator with project management skills honed in managing multinational and multi-disciplinary project teams, Chris has a further 5 years’ experience working in the transport and environment area at the National Audit Office and developing ports policy at the European Commission in Brussels, complemented by a degree in History and a professional qualification as a Chartered Member of the Institute of Logistics and Transport.

Chris is the Managing Director of MDS Transmodal, working for public and private sector clients on projects in the road and rail freight, ports and shipping sectors and on urban freight and public policy.

Ben is an Analyst in the TAME Team within Transport for the North (TfN).

He leads on the development and application of the NorMITs Demand suite of tools, which generate base and future year synthetic demand matrices for mainland GB,  with a focus on the north of England. 

Ben has a background in software,  getting his PhD in Deep Neural Network optimisation before joining TfN 2 years ago.

Gerry lead Arup’s City Modelling Lab, an R&D team working across both fundamental and applied research in city scale simulations. I'm interested in evidence based decision making and modelling for enlightenment, not post-justification.

The City Modelling Lab is an interdisciplinary team, with a mixture of domain experts (in transport, energy, climate change, air quality, and economics), data scientists, software engineers and designers working to make cities better. We work on city scale simulations, for both hard infrastructure scenario testing (e.g. new metro systems) and soft policy testing (e.g. road pricing). We synthesise populations and build Agent and Activity based models of our cities.

We use these techniques and approaches to help us guide decision making on decarbonisation, equitable growth and the possible impact of innovation and disruption (e.g. ride sharing and MaaS). I work closely with academia and I’m interested in both fundamental and applied research in this space.

Martin Lucas-Smith is Developer and Director at CycleStreets Ltd. Working with colleague Simon Nuttall, our analysis work has resulted in the first ever mapping of modal filters and Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods across the UK, demonstrating the very widespread nature of these traffic management measures.

CycleStreets Ltd creates bicycle routing and advocacy tools. Our data/routing is used in systems such as the Propensity to Cycle Tool and in apps like Citymapper. We’re OpenStreetMap experts. We’ve also created sites like StreetFocus (UK-wide planning application data, matched to S106 project proposals), and WidenMyPath for capturing citizen ideas.

Contacts:

Martin Lucas-Smith

info@cyclestreets.net

01223 701901

www.cyclestreets.org

Douglas is a Chartered Transport Planning Professional with more than 15 years of experience in the transport sector. After studies in Transport Economics and GIS, Douglas managed data collection and evaluation for transport model development and application at Transport Scotland. In 2012 he moved to TomTom, where he has spearheaded the development of GPS data derived products and services for transport modellers, road authorities and drivers

Rafe is a recent graduate, having studied a Master’s in Physics at the University of Manchester. He is currently working as an analyst for Transport for the North (TfN), where he is aiding their freight modelling by developing a tool to predict optimum warehouse locations around Great Britain. He has also been involved in the modelling of material properties and construction costs of railways.

Laurence is a transport modelling and EV infrastructure expert who is currently leading on the Charge project for PTV UK. The Charge project is an innovation partnership between the transport and electricity industries to help anticipate and prepare for the impact of EV charging on the electricity network. He is part of the technical team for PTV UK, supporting users of their software and innovating to deliver new features. Prior to joining PTV 3 years ago, Laurence worked as a transport modelling consultant, helping to deliver a range of modelling and scheme appraisal projects in the West Midlands and UK. He has a background in academia, with research focussed on the demonstration of electric vehicles, the requirements for their charging, and understanding the implications on the power network including Smart Grids and V2X systems.

Dr Djibril Kaba is a Senior Data Scientist at Connected Places Catapult. With over 14 years of experience in public and private sectors including transport, healthcare, insurtech, central and local authorities, and academia. As a technical lead of Galileo for Mobility Service project, Dr. Djibril Kaba has coordinated the development of data driven analytics and machine learning applications for demand forecasting and travel behaviours analysis.  He has also been involved in several DfT projects, developing data-driven applications for strategic transport modelling including both agent-based and activity-based modelling applications.