Jinhua Zhao Appointed Head of MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning

Jinhua Zhao, who holds MCP ’04, SM ’04, and PhD ’09 degrees from MIT, has been appointed head of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), effective July 1. Zhao currently serves as the Class of 1941 Professor of Cities and Transportation at MIT.

Hashim Sarkis, dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, announced the appointment. Sarkis described Zhao as a renowned transportation planner, educator, and scholar, and a global leader in envisioning and shaping future mobility. He highlighted Zhao's ability to seamlessly transition between cutting-edge research and real-world policy, citing his work with governments and transportation agencies worldwide as a model for MIT’s broader impact.

Zhao succeeds Professor Christopher Zegras, who led the department since 2020. Under Zegras’s leadership, DUSP expanded opportunities for students to engage directly with communities and policymakers globally, strengthening the department’s connection between research and practice. Dean Sarkis extended gratitude for Zegras's leadership during challenging times.

After earning advanced degrees at MIT, Zhao joined the DUSP faculty. He found the Institute's lack of conventionality and its culture of sharing ideas across disciplines stimulating. Zhao noted that MIT has fewer intellectual and physical boundaries than other universities, with its 'infinite corridor' literally connecting many disciplines.

This connectivity has been key to Zhao’s research and the programs he founded at MIT. Respected as a global authority on mobility, his research has been put into practice across some of the world's most complex mobility challenges. He and his team have shaped policy for Transport for London, the Mass Transit Railway in Hong Kong, and Japan Railways. His research has also positively impacted leading U.S. transit authorities, including Boston’s MBTA, the Chicago Transit Authority, and Washington’s Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. Zhao has guided strategic planning for the mobility industry on the future of autonomous and digital mobility and developed autonomous vehicle (AV) deployment strategies in Singapore and the Middle East. He states that a common tension in cities he has worked with is that technology moves faster than the institutions designed to govern it, and his work focuses on closing that gap.

At MIT, Zhao founded the MIT Mobility Initiative, which engages mobility and transportation researchers across the Institute and leaders in these disciplines from around the world. He hosts the weekly MIT Mobility Forum via Zoom, with each discussion open to the public. This platform has grown to draw more than 200 practitioners, policymakers, and researchers every week globally. Zhao directs the JTL Urban Mobility Lab, which unites behavioral science and transportation technology to shape travel behavior, design mobility systems, and improve transportation policies. He is also a lead principal investigator with Mens, Manus, and Machina, an MIT initiative at the intersection of artificial intelligence, the future of work, and human learning.

According to MIT News AI, the significant interest in the subject does not surprise Zhao, as he believes no single discipline owns transportation. He notes that AI and autonomous systems are reshaping urban living faster than most institutions can adapt. (Source: MIT News AI)