Greetings! I’m Songhua Hu (胡松华), a Postdoctoral Researcher at MIT Senseable City Lab. My research explores the nexus of urban sensing, human mobility, and transportation system. I’m passionate about seeking innovative solutions for complex urban transportation challenges using emerging crowdsensing and modelling techniques.
I’ve been working with a diverse set of sensors (Mobile phones, Mobile apps, Traffic cameras, Floating cars, Social media) using different modelling approaches (Deep learning, Statistics, Simulation, Network science, Cloud computing). My work has been applied to various scenarios such as Digit-twin mobility system, Travel demand modelling, Transport geography, Mobility as a Service (MaaS), Travel behavioral economics, Disaster response, Transportation decarbonization, and Travel and Infectious Disease.
Research Highlights
- Urban Mobility Sensing and Computing
- Digital-twin Cities and Spatiotemporal Data Mining
- Disaster Response and Community Resilience
- Computational Epidemiology and Health Geography
- Miscellaneous: Transportation Sustainability, Transportation Economics, Mobility as a service (MaaS)
Education
- Ph.D., Transportation Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, 2023
- M.S., Transportation Engineering, Tongji University, 2019
- Thesis: “Promoting electric vehicle utilization in large-scale carsharing systems: Factors analysis and relocation simulation”
- B.S., Transportation Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 2016
- Thesis: “Simulation of pedestrian flow in metro systems: a dynamic floor-field cellular automata approach”
Publications
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (1 Paper).
- Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice (1 Paper, 1 First-Author).
- Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies (4 Papers, 3 First-Author).
- Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment (3 Papers, 3 First-Author).
- Journal of Transport Geography (2 Papers, 2 First-Author).
- Sustainable Cities and Society (1 Paper, 1 First-Author).
- IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine (1 Paper, 1 First-Author).
- Journal of the Royal Society Interface (1 Paper).
- Vaccine (2 Papers, 2 First-Author).
- PLOS One (2 Papers, 1 First-Author).
- Health & Place (1 Paper).
- International Journal of Sustainable Transportation (1 Paper).
- Transportation Research Record (2 Papers).
- IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (2 Papers, 2 First-Author).
- Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting (>20 Posters/Presentations).
See the full list here: Google Scholar
Awards
- Chinese Overseas Transportation Association (COTA) Best Dissertation Award, 2023.
- UMD CEE Best Doctoral Research Award, University of Maryland, College Park, 2023.
- Outstanding Reviewer, Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 2023.
- Outstanding Graduate Assistant (Top 2%), University of Maryland, College Park, 2021.
- CEE Summer Research Fellowship, University of Maryland, College Park, 2020.
- The Graduate School’s Dean’s Fellowship, University of Maryland, College Park, 2019.
- Graduate Merit Scholarship, Tongji University, 2018.
- Second Price (2/140), China Big Data Innovation Competition, 2017.
- Undergraduate Merit Scholarship (20/7000), Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 2015.
- National Scholarship (1/64), Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 2013 - 2015.
Reviews
- Journal Article Reviewer
- Transportation: Accident Analysis and Prevention; IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems; International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology; Journal of Transport Geography; Journal of Transport and Land Use; Journal of Advanced Transportation; Transportation; Transportation Research Part B: Methodological; Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies; Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment; Transport Policy; Traffic Injury Prevention; Travel Behavior and Society; Transportation Letters; Transportation Research Record; Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives.
- Planning and GIS: Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society; Cities; Computational Urban Science; Geo-spatial Information Science; Journal of Planning Education and Research; Journal of Urban Technology; Regional Studies; Sustainable Cities and Society.
- Public Health: AIMS Public Health; Biosafety and Health; Health Data Science; The Lancet Regional Health - Western Pacific.
- Multidisciplinary: Cogent Engineering; IEEE Access; Nature Cities; Scientific Reports; PLOS One.
- Conference Proceeding Reviewer
- TRB Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting; COTA International Conference of Transportation Professionals; IACP International Association of China Planning; IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society Conference Management System
See the full list here: Web of Science
Skills
- Programming
- Python (pandas, ultralytics, opencv, pytorch, sklearn, pymc), R (dplyr, car, lavaan, mgcv, spdep), SQL (MySQL, pgAdmin, Impala, Oracle), Cloud Computing (PySpark, EMR), Matlab, Git, Bash, Java, HTML.
- Statistics
- Causal inference (DID, 2SLS, SEM (Mediation analysis, Path analysis), BSTS), Time series (ARIMA, SARIMA), Survival analysis (Cox, Time-varying Cox), Regression (Generalized linear models (Poisson, NB, Zero-Inflated), Generalized additive (mixed) models, PLS, Lasso/Ridge/ElasticNet), Spatial econometrics (SER, SLR, SDR, GWR, GTWR), Discrete choice model (Multinomial, Mixed, Nested).
- Deep learning/Machine learning
- Time series forecasting (CNN, LSTM, GRU, Transformer), Graph neural network (STGCN), Computer vision (Vehicle/Pedestrian Detection, Tracking, Segmentation), Natural language processing (Text mining, Topic modelling, Sentiment analysis, LLM), Tree models (RF, XGBoost, LightGBM, CatBoost), Explainable AI (SHAP, PDP, ALE).
- Traffic Simulation
- Micro (Vissim, Sumo), Agent (MATSim, DTALite, AnyLogic), Macro (TransCAD, Visum).
- (Spatiotemporal) Network Analysis
- ArcGIS, QGIS, Geopandas, NetworkX, igraph, OSMnx.