Kari E. Watkins
Frederick Law Olmsted Associate Professor
Affinity Group: Transportation Systems Engineering
Office: SEB 228
Phone: (206) 250-4415
Biography
Dr. Kari Watkins is the Frederick Law Olmsted Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech. She returned to her undergraduate alma mater to become a faculty member in 2011 after completing her PhD at the University of Washington. Her primary research interests are how technology and public space can be used to encourage active (biking, walking) and collective (transit, rideshare) transportation modes. Dr. Watkins’ is the recipient of the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC) 2017 New Faculty Award and was recently named to Engineering Georgia’s 100 Influential Women to Know. She is well known for her work in real-time information and open transit data through OneBusAway, an award-winning open source app that provides transit information tools and assesses their impacts on riders. More recent work has included understanding cyclist safety and perceived safety through crowdsourced data and instrumented bikes. Prior to her doctoral studies, Dr. Watkins worked for a decade as a senior transportation engineer leading regional transportation, transit, and biking studies.
Research Interests
- Transportation planning
- Transit planning and operations
- Traveler Information
- Mode choice decision making
- Complete streets design
Education
- Ph.D., Civil Engineering, University of Washington, 2011.
- M.S., Civil Engineering, University of Connecticut, 2003.
- B.S., Civil Engineering (graduated with highest honors), Georgia Institute of Technology, 1997.