Giovanni Circella, Ph.D.

Giovanni Circella is the Director of the 3 Revolutions Future Mobility Program and the Honda Distinguished Scholar for New Mobility Studies at the University of California, Davis, and a professor of mobility in the Department of Geography of Ghent University. He is also the Head of the Master School in Urban Mobility of the European Institute of Technology.

Dr. Circella’s teaching and research interests include transportation planning, travel behavior analysis, emerging mobility services, sustainable transportation, travel demand modeling, travel survey methods, and policy analysis. His recent research has focused on the impacts of information and communication technology (ICT), remote/hybrid work, e-shopping, new mobility (including shared mobility, micromobility, and ridehailing) and vehicle automation on travel behavior and auto ownership, and the evolving lifestyles and mobility patterns of various population segments (e.g. “millennials”) in various regions of the U.S., Europe, South America and the Middle East. He is leading a major research effort on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on activity organization and travel choices.

Dr. Circella has been the author of many scientific publications and the principal investigator for several research projects totaling more than $4 million in sponsored research for a variety of funding agencies, including federal, state, and local government agencies and research foundations. He is the Chair of the Standing Committee on ICT and Transportation (AEP35), and a member of the Travel Behavior and Values (AEP30) Committee and the International Coordination Council of the Transportation Research Board. Dr. Circella is also an elected member of the Executive Board of the International Association for Travel Behaviour Research (IATBR), and he serves in the US National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) 20-102, 20-102(01), 20-102(09) and 20-102(19) and the US Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) B-47 project panels on the impacts of connected and automated vehicles and other emerging transportation technologies on travel. This role matches his research interests on the analysis of the impact of connected and autonomous vehicles and other emerging technologies on travel behavior, the use of transportation infrastructures and the future modifications in lifestyles and the urban form of cities. Prof. Circella has been working as a transportation consultant for the World Bank studying the role of new transportation technologies in Southeast Asian countries, and regularly cooperates with metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), other agencies, and non-profit organizations in the U.S., Europe, and South America.