Behram Wali is Lead Research Scientist at Urban Design 4 Health, Inc. Behram obtained his postdoctoral training in Smart Cities at Senseable City Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology – where he also served as a member on the Presidential Committee on Race and Diversity. In 2018, he received a Ph.D. degree in Transportation Engineering and an M.S. degree in Statistics from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville – under supervision of Prof. Asad J. Khattak. Behram served as a graduate student senator at University of Tennessee, and ambassador of Howard H. Baker Center for Public Policy (UT). Prior to that, in 2015, he obtained M.S. degree in Transportation Engineering and received the President of Pakistan Gold Medal award for his academic performance at National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan. 

His research focuses on various types of innovations related to the interdependence between built-environment, travel behavior, and health, as well as, intelligent transportation systems, transport safety, and behavioral forecasting of Connected, Automated, Shared, and Electric (CASE) vehicles. By using billions of real-world spatiotemporal traces of human and vehicle movement complemented with comprehensive behavioral and infrastructure data, his research elucidates the role of human behaviors for proactive safety, smart mobility, and health. Methodologically, Behram is interested in the development and application of advanced statistical, econometric, and quasi-machine learning methods to prospect opportunities for designing safer, smarter, and healthier transport systems. 

Under his role at UD4H, Behram is leading the analytical work for major research projects funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the US National Institutes of Health. With a “pracademic” approach, Behram’s research philosophy underscores the value of practice-based evidence to inform the development of methodological and theoretical tools for evidence-based practice. To this end, by working with governmental and private sponsors, Behram’s work at UD4H relates to development of research ideas with intellectual merit without compromising on its relevance to practice – enabling integration of advanced Artificial Intelligence and (quasi) Bayesian methods with new theoretical developments in the interdisciplinary field of transport, planning, and health. As part of his postdoctoral work at MIT, Behram’s research focused on integrating spatiotemporal big data streams from CAN-Bus, wearables, and video devices to understand real-world driving stress and developing novel behavioral models for forecasting CASE vehicle use and adoption. During his doctoral program, Behram worked on 8 projects funded by U.S. National Science Foundation, US Department of Transportation (DOT), US-Department of Energy, and the Tennessee-DOT.

Since 2016, Behram has authored/co-authored 66 research articles (31 journal and 35 peer-reviewed conference papers). Behram serves on the editorial board of Journal of Safety Research (IF: 3.48) and as a topic editor for International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) (IF: 3.39). He is currently editing a special issue on “Physical Environment to Human Health in the Era of Big Data” for IJERPH and is actively reviewing manuscripts for over 12 transport journals including Transportation Research Part B: Methodological and TR-Part C: Emerging Technologies, Accident Analysis and Prevention, and IEEE Transactions on ITS. He is the recipient of “Distinguished Scientific Papers – Americas” award from the 2016 ITS World Congress, 2017 TRB Outstanding Paper Award awarded by the TRB Safety Data, Analysis, and Evaluation Committee, and sponsorship/funding from TRB’s Strategic Highway Research Program for his naturalistic driving research.

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