PhD Research Placement at IT University, København

During the autumn of 2024, I have had the great pleasure of visiting the Networks, Data & Society (NERDS) research group at ITU for 4 months. NERDS covers a broad range of network science research areas, from social networks and science of sciences to bicycle network planning and urban design.

More specifically, I worked with Associate Prof. Michael Szell and his team of researchers. My research up until this visit had focused on the street network form of cycling cities and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in the UK, whilst my time at ITU focused on the connection between these two topics. The research visit was a two way exchange of ideas between myself and my colleauges at NERDS, with a focus on the network science approaches to urban transportation planning. We worked together on new approaches to growing optimal cycle networks which intergrate superblocks and existing active travel infrastucutre. I have been able to provide my learning from the UK to the more generalised network sciences approaches of NERDS, and visa versa. We aim to publish the results from our collaboration during 2025, so watch this space!

Aside from our specific collboration, it has been a fanstistic opportunity to learn more about the wider research community at ITU, and from visting other researchers such as those from Copenhagen Center for Socail Data Science (SODAS) research group at the University of Copenhagen or at Transportation Systems Modelling at Technical University of Denmark (DTU).