Our Team

Adam Millard-Ball

Adam Millard-Ball is a professor of urban planning in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. His research and teaching are about transportation, the environment, and urban data science. Trained as an economist, a geographer, and an urban planner, he analyzes the environmental consequences of transportation and land-use decisions, and the effectiveness of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. His research uses large-scale geospatial data analysis as well as econometric and qualitative methods.

Jiaqi Ma

Jiaqi Ma is Faculty Associate Director of UCLA ITS and an associate professor at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering.

Professor Ma is the lead for the New Mobility research program.

Juan Matute

Juan Matute, Deputy Director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS), leads research initiatives that bridge the gap between academic inquiry and practical transportation decision-making. As Deputy Director, Juan Matute leads UCLA ITS’s annual UCLA Arrowhead Symposium on urban and regional planning and is the Program Manager for the national Center of Excellence on New Mobility and Automated Vehicles.

At UCLA ITS, Juan spearheads research projects that delve into public transit, transportation finance, and governance. His interdisciplinary approach, rooted in problem-solving and systems thinking, enables him to unravel complex transportation challenges and develop effective solutions.

Juan’s dedication to public service extends beyond UCLA. He actively serves on various state, regional, and city committees, contributing his expertise to initiatives such as the Transit Transformation Task Force, Open Data/Big Data – Smart, and Connected SCAG Region Committee. Juan’s involvement in working groups and boards, such as the Los Angeles Parking Reform Working Group and the Downtown Santa Monica, Inc. Board of Directors, demonstrates his commitment to improving transportation systems at the local level.

Juan’s passion for transportation extends to the classroom, where he has taught numerous courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels at UCLA. His courses cover a wide range of topics, including transportation, environmental assessment, and climate planning.

Juan holds an MBA and Urban Planning MA from UCLA and a BA from Pomona College. He lives in Santa Monica, CA., where he and his wife Sirinya bike, walk, and use transit regularly with their son.

Whitney Willis

Whitney coordinates events and manages the center’s daily business and personnel operations including the student fellowships and grants. Prior to joining ITS, Whitney was the program manager for the Center for Collaborative Education’s Los Angeles (CCE). During her time at CCE, she managed the program and administrative efforts of the Los Angeles Urban Teacher Residency Program and the Los Angeles New Administrators Leadership Program. She also supported the recruitment and communications efforts of both programs. Whitney also worked as a senior supervisor with the the Associate Students of UCLA for five years managing a staff of up 40-60 employees.  

Whitney’s passion is community development. She has volunteered as a math and science tutor in numerous childcare centers and mentoring programs. She has also spent time as a volunteer in many educational nonprofits such as the Casa Heiwa Angelina Mentorship Program, the Center for Powerful Public Schools, and the Angel Tree Foundation. In 2013, she was an honoree for the One Faith Fellowship program for her volunteer work. She earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology from UCLA.

Claudia Bustamante

Claudia is the communications manager for the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, where she promotes the institute’s research, expertise and accomplishments through original content, media outreach, website and social media management, publication dissemination, and community engagement. She also serves as managing editor for Transfers Magazine, a biannual research publication of the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center.

Claudia brings extensive experience running communications programs for other university-based research centers, including most recently the USC Center for Innovation and Research on Veterans and Military Families, UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access, and UC/ACCORD, an all-UC campus research consortium. Claudia has also worked as a development officer for a Hollywood-based community mental health agency and a newspaper reporter in the Inland Empire. Claudia received a master’s in journalism from USC and a bachelor’s in communications and classics from UCLA. 

Hao Ding

Hao Ding is a postdoctoral scholar at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. His research interests include the equity and justice impacts of urban design regulations, the interaction between urban form and transportation, and transportation equity. His most recent works examine the effects of conventional local transportation planning practices on housing production and affordability, and the effects of design regulations on place identities in the Asian American ethnoburbs in Los Angeles. He has also been involved in several ITS research projects that study California’s land use and transportation systems, sexual harassment on public transit, homelessness in transit environments, and public transit during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Amy Lee

Amy Lee is a postdoctoral scholar in the Luskin School of Public Policy and the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA.  Her dissertation investigated policymaking and politics around highway expansion and transportation investments, aiming to better understand the barriers and opportunities for policy change. Amy’s research generally focuses on transportation and land use policy that perpetuate automobile dependence and she has published on a range of transportation topics including induced travel, transportation programming and finance, active travel behavior, and transportation impact analysis, and the implications of policy shifts from automobile level-of-service to vehicle miles traveled (VMT).  Amy holds a PhD and master’s in Transportation Technology and Policy and a bachelor’s in Environmental Policy and Planning from the University of California, Davis. Prior to academia Amy was a research analyst at the metropolitan planning organization in the Sacramento region.

Adonia Lugo

Cultural anthropologist Adonia E. Lugo was born and raised in traditional and unceded Acjachemen territory and now lives and works in traditional and unceded Tongva territory in Los Angeles. Adonia began investigating transportation, race, and space during her graduate studies at UC Irvine, when she co-created the Los Angeles open street event CicLAvia and the organization today known as People for Mobility Justice. Since receiving her doctorate in 2013, Adonia has applied her research on “human infrastructure” in sustainable mobility advocacy and helped to define the concept of “mobility justice.” Adonia is Equity Research Manager at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, a core organizer of The Untokening, and a recent appointee to the California Transportation Commission.

John Gahbauer

John Gahbauer is a research consultant at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies.

Mark Garrett

Mark Garrett is a research consultant at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies.

Jacob Wasserman

Jacob Wasserman studies and manages research on public transit, the intersection of transportation and other social issues, and a range of mobility questions at UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. With a background in transportation equity, finance, and demand management, Wasserman serves as the lead scholar of ITS’ Public Transit research program.

Prior to joining ITS, he worked for the Cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New Haven on capital planning, vehicle miles traveled development review thresholds, budget process improvements, and active transportation. He also served as a Transportation Justice Fellow for BART Director Lateefah Simon, coordinating passage of the system’s Safe Transit sanctuary policy.

Wasserman has a Master of Urban and Regional Planning degree from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, with concentrations in transportation policy and planning and in community economic development and housing, in the housing stream. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history and political science from Yale.

Phoebe Chiu

Phoebe Chiu is the events and operations coordinator for the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies and the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. She helps facilitate undergraduate engagement and supports the operations manager in organizing events, processing reimbursements, updating websites, and supervising students. At the Institute of Transportation Studies, she is also a member of research projects, one of which examines how Metropolitan Planning Organizations approach climate and equity in their long-range planning and another investigating changes in time-use and travel due to ongoing shifts in telecommunications use. Before her current role, Phoebe worked part time to support the 2023 UCLA Lake Arrowhead Symposium while interning at the Ella Baker Center, a nonprofit organization focused on prison advocacy. While serving at the Ella Baker Center, she supported their policy agenda for the 2024-2025 Legislative Cycle and implementation of Hidden Hazards: The Impacts of Climate Change on Incarcerated People in California State Prisons, a project funded by the UCLA Institute on Inequality and Democracy.

Tamika Butler

Tamika L. Butler (she/her/they/them) is a student researcher at ITS. She is a national expert and speaker on issues related to the built environment, equity, anti-racism, organizational behavior, and change management. As the Founder of Tamika L. Butler Consulting, she focuses on shining a light on inequality, inequity, and social injustice. Previously, she was the Director of Planning, California and the Director of Equity and Inclusion at Toole Design. Tamika served as the Executive Director of the LA Neighborhood Land Trust and LA County Bicycle Coalition. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Urban Planning. Tamika received her J.D. from Stanford Law School, and received B.S. in Sociology at Creighton University in her hometown of Omaha, Nebraska.

Jordan Grimaldi

Jordan is a current Master of Urban and Regional Planning student at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. She is excited to be supporting the Institute of Transportation Studies as a Communications Fellow for the 2024-2025 academic year. Jordan is arriving to UCLA with 4+ years of community-based planning experience with a specialty in Safe Routes to Schools policies and programming. If you share a passion for food, health equity, and active transportation, please feel free to reach out!

Madi Hamilton

Madi Hamilton is in her second year as a Master of Urban and Regional Planning student. She is interested in mobility justice involving public transit and active transportation and the relationship between transportation infrastructure and affordable housing. At ITS, Madi works as a GSR on a project focused on equity implications related to transportation payments.

Yu Hong Hwang

Yu Hong Hwang is a PhD student in urban planning and a research data analyst with the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. He is interested in the intersection of transportation engineering, planning, and policy, especially at the misalignment between engineering practice and planning and policy goals. He obtained his BS in Materials Engineering and has a MURP from UCLA.

Hannah King

Hannah King is a fifth-year PhD student in transportation planning. Her research interests focus on transportation finance, changing commute behavior, and challenges facing public transit. She has been published in the Journal of the American Planning Association, Transportation, and numerous other venues. She received the Best Article Award 2021 from the Journal of the American Planning Association for the article, “Jobs–Housing Balance Re-Re-Visited.” She has an undergraduate degree in Applied Economics and English Literature and master’s degrees in Urban Planning and Geographic Information Systems, all from Florida State University. Prior to starting the PhD program, Hannah worked as a planning analyst for the State of Florida.

Andres F. Ramirez

Andres F. Ramirez is a doctoral candidate in urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research explores the entanglements of property, Indigenous urbanism and insurgent planning in the global South, with a particular emphasis in his country of birth, Colombia. He has also worked extensively at UCLA’s ITS on examining the historical impact of freeways on communities of color across California.

Fariba Siddiq

Fariba Siddiq is a doctoral student in the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA and a researcher at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA. Her research interest lies in transportation equity, travel behavior, land use transportation interaction, and innovative mobility. She completed her master’s degree in City and Metropolitan Planning from the University of Utah, and her bachelor’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. Before her master’s, she served as a lecturer in the Department of Urban Planning at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. She also worked as a consultant in the Gender and Mobility team of the World Bank. 

Daniel Sjoholm

Daniel Sjoholm is a Master of Urban and Regional Planning student in the UCLA-Sciences Po double degree program. Daniel is in the transportation concentration, and particular interests are around transportation engineering, climate resilience, and housing/land use policy. At ITS, Daniel currently works as a GSR on a project looking at how changes in California state laws have caused changes in transit quality and housing capacity.

Sam Speroni

Sam Speroni is a doctoral student in the UCLA Department of Urban Planning and a graduate student researcher at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. His primary research interests lie in travel behavior, transportation finance, and school transportation, all with a focus on advancing equity. Sam earned his master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA and a bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies from Brown University.

Tat Srisan

Tat Srisan is a doctoral student from the UCLA Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His interests lie in transportation equity, supporting disadvantaged communities and developing areas, analyzing travel behavior, and connecting travel demand modeling with practitioners and policymakers. He also holds a master’s degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.

Madeline Wander

Madeline Wander is a UCLA Urban Planning doctoral student and a UCLA ITS graduate student researcher whose research examines transportation disparities and justice amidst the changing geography of low-income communities of color from cities to suburbs. Madeline holds a BA in Urban and Environmental Policy from Occidental College and a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning from UCLA. She sits on the Board of Directors of the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment. Prior to pursuing her PhD, she was a Senior Data Analyst at the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (now USC Equity Research Institute). Madeline lives in northeast Los Angeles with her partner Ben and their children Hannah and Noah.