Johanna Zmud, Ph.D.

TTI Senior Research Scientist
Division Head
Head, Multimodal Planning Division

Education

• Ph.D., Social Science, University of Southern California (USC), 1992

Short Biography

Dr. Zmud is a travel behavior researcher. She has been at the forefront of applying survey science to the gathering of data on travel behavior and in understanding trends, such as transportation mode choice and use of communication technologies to substitute for travel. Starting in 1987, and for the next 23 years, she was a co-founder of NuStats, which became the largest producer of data on urban travel behavior. In early 2000, she co-founded, GeoStats, which developed technology solutions for measuring personal and vehicle movements. In 2010, Dr. Zmud joined the RAND Corporation, where she served as Director of RAND’s Transportation, Space, and Technology program. In 2014, she joined TTI’s leadership team. Recently, she has studied the impacts of technology-enabled mobility on society and implications for transportation agencies, directly applying her Ph.D. in the Sociology of Technology from the University of Southern California.

She is a frequent invited contributor to international transportation forums. In 2020, she was co-author of a G20 Policy Brief on defining the role of automated transportation infrastructure in shaping socio-technical systems; in 2019, she was a plenary presenter on Future Challenges in Robomobility at the 2nd Grand Challenge sponsored by French Ministry of Transport; in 2018, she authored a white paper for the FHWA, Office of Policy Emerging Trends Symposium on Vehicle Connectivity, Mobility-on-Demand, Shared Mobility, and Vehicle Automation and also co-authored a white paper for an EU-US Symposium on: The Socio-Economic Impacts of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV) and Shared Mobility.

In 2016, she was honored as a National Associate of the National Research Council. She is currently a member of the TRB Committees on Effects of Information and Communication Technologies on Travel Choices and Statewide/National Transportation Data and Information Systems, after having served as chair of several Task Forces, Committees, Data and Information Systems Section, and Policy and Organization Group. She is Program Chair of TRB’s Sustainability and Emerging Transportation Technologies Conference; and co-author of the Technology Chapter, TRNews Themed Issue on Transportation’s Future. She also serves as Chair of the Institute of Transportation Engineers Steering Committee on Mobility as a Service and Mobility-on-Demand. She was a founding Board Member of the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (CTRMA).

Her current studies: An examination of the impacts of transformational technologies on underserved populations, development of new performance measures for mobility on demand services, and independent evaluation of national connected vehicle pilot demonstrations.

Her recent publications: Older Drivers and Transportation Network Companies, Using New Data Source to Address Metropolitan Freight Challenges, Understanding the Travel Behavior Impacts of Autonomous Vehicles, Policy Strategies to Advance Connected and Automated (CAV) Vehicles, Accounting for CAV in Regional Planning and Modeling, and Understanding Drivers’ Acceptance of Emerging Transportation Technologies.