Transforming Canadian Cities: Toward Equitable and Decarbonized Urban Transportation through Electrification, Automation, Shared Use, and Transit-Oriented Development
Funded PhD position at the Institute for Information Systems Engineering
Last updated: October 10, 2025, 3:48 p.m.
Supervisory details
Supervisor: Anjali Awasthi
Department: Institute for Information Systems Engineering, Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science
University: Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Start date: Winter 2026, Summer 2026, Fall 2026
PhD Fellowship: 35K CAD per year for 4 years
Project overview
This project aims to build a resilient and equitable transportation ecosystem in Canada by integrating electrified, automated, and shared-use transit systems within the framework of Transit-Oriented Development (TOD). Anchored in the Government of Canada’s recent Alto high-speed rail initiative, the research addresses both the opportunities and challenges of large-scale transit electrification.
Role description
- Design and implement a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework (e.g., AHP/ANP, TOPSIS, ELECTRE/PROMETHEE) to prioritize bus routes for electrification across battery-electric, trolley, hydrogen fuel cell, hybrid options.
- Build data pipelines integrating GTFS/AVL/APC ridership data, route geometry, topography, weather/extreme-temperature histories, grid constraints, and emissions factors; ensure data quality, imputation, and versioning.
- Develop predictive ML models (demand, dwell time, energy use, reliability under weather/load) and simulation modules (e.g., depot/layover charging, en-route charging, fleet sizing) to estimate ROI and service impacts.
- Formulate and solve optimization problems (robust/stochastic) for technology selection, charger siting/sizing, and scheduling; perform sensitivity and uncertainty analysis.
- Create a decision-support dashboard (interactive UI + APIs) to visualize trade-offs (cost, GHG/air quality, reliability, equity/access), explain rankings, and export scenarios for stakeholders.
- Conduct scenario studies (e.g., winter peaks, heat waves, demand surges), compare technology mixes, and quantify environmental and lifecycle impacts.
- Lead stakeholder engagement (transit ops, planners, finance) to elicit criteria weights, constraints, and KPIs; document assumptions and governance.
- Author reproducible research artifacts (clean code, notebooks, datasets), write papers for OR/transport journals, and present at CORS/IEEE/TRB venues.
- Collaborate across WP teams to align with city logistics, ITS, and sustainable supply chain insights; mentor MSc/undergrad assistants.
- Master’s in Industrial/Systems Engineering, Transportation/Urban Systems, Operations Research, Computer Science, Data Science, or closely related field with strong quantitative training.
- Demonstrated experience in MCDM/MCDA and at least one of optimization (MILP/robust/stochastic), simulation (discrete-event/agent-based), or time-series/ML for mobility/operations.
- Proficiency in Python (pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn; PyTorch/JAX a plus), SQL, and GIS (QGIS/GeoPandas); experience building ETL pipelines for messy, multi-source datasets.
- Familiarity with transit operations, GTFS/AVL/APC data, charging strategies, and energy/consumption modeling for electric fleets; ability to incorporate weather extremes and reliability constraints.
- Ability to translate technical outputs into actionable tools/dashboards (e.g., Plotly/Dash/Streamlit) and communicate trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.
- Strong publication record (or clear potential), rigorous experimental design, code/research reproducibility, and clear scientific writing.
- Nice to have (assets): Experience with PROMETHEE/ELECTRE, OR-Tools/Pyomo, AnyLogic/SimPy, LCA/GHG accounting, multi-objective optimization, and equity/access metrics for connected communities.
- Competitive funding package with additional support for conference travel, technical training, and professional development.
- Supervision and mentorship from Professor Anjali Awasthi, an internationally recognized expert in sustainable logistics, operations research, and intelligent transportation systems.
- Access to state-of-the-art computing and simulation facilities at Concordia University, including advanced data mining, machine learning, and decision-support environments.
- Collaboration within a multidisciplinary research team spanning operations research, energy systems, transportation engineering, and supply chain management.
- Opportunities to publish in top-tier journals and present at international conferences in operations research, sustainable mobility, and transportation systems.
Please combine the following documents into a single PDF file.
- Letter of intent strongly aligned with the project and the research domain of the professor (Please explain why you a good fit for the role)
- Academic CV
- Transcripts
- Names and contact information of 3 referees
- Publications if any
- Any other documents that might benefit your file
Applications must be in screen-readable PDF.
If you are already in Canada, or if you’re a Canadian citizen or Permanent Resident, please highlight this in your communications.
Send your PDF file to volt-age.recruitment@concordia.ca with the subject as:
Sustainable mobility_Your Name
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
Questions/contact
For all questions, please contact Alisa Makusheva at alisa.makusheva@concordia.ca.
