About me

Welcome! I am a transportation geographer researching human mobility (accessibility and travel behavior) as performance indicators of equity, environment, and health using geospatial data science. Currently, I serve as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Geoinformation Science at George Mason University. I completed my Ph.D. in Geography at The Ohio State University in 2023, my Master's in Geography and GIS at the University of Utah in 2019, and Bachelor's in Urban and Regional Planning from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in 2015.

My research explores the complex social, environmental, and health challenges around human mobility. I am specifically interested in understanding how the existing travel environment, explicitly through its physical characteristics and implicitly through shaping individuals’ perceptions and lived experiences, leads to different forms of mobility inequities. I leverage geospatial data science, space-time modeling, and network analytics to advance methods identifying data-driven, human-centered transportation solutions, aiming to foster safer, healthier, and more equitable travel environments.

My research answers three overarching questions:

  1. How can we promote access equities? I examine the socio-economic differences in travel patterns and accessibility to essential community services, particularly food and healthcare, considering sustainable transportation modes, namely public transit, walking, and biking. In my doctoral dissertation, I have developed a novel, socially sensitive measure, Inclusive Accessibility, that integrates diverse travel perceptions and experiences of individuals and social groups into space-time accessibility models. My research focuses on understanding the predispositions and vulnerabilities vested within our transportation system, posing unequal access to opportunities across socio-economic communities and its tendency to exacerbate during social, natural, and climatic disruptions.

  2. How can we ensure safe travel to opportunities? I investigate how unsafe urban conditions can impede travel and access to opportunities. I evaluate the social differences in realized and perceived risks, both road-based (e.g., crashes) and social (e.g., crime), and their environmental determinants. I develop methods for designing need-specific urban planning interventions that enable risk mitigation and safe mobility for vulnerable road users, such as low-income women, older adults, children, and people with disabilities.

  3. How can we mitigate mobility-induced environmental exposure and foster health and well-being? I quantify exposure to environmental risks such as air pollution, noise, and heat due to everyday travel and their physical and mental health impacts. I aim to advance these quantification techniques using big mobility data analytics to examine the social differences in environmental exposure and their implications toward health equity.

My work has been published in several high-impact, peer-reviewed journals, including Annals of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, Transportation Research Part D, Applied Geography, Journal of Transport Geography, Transportation Research Record (TRR), Risk Analysis, and Atmospheric Environment. I received several awards for my work, including the Postdoc Idea Award from the NCH Abigail Wexner Research Institute, the E. Willard and Ruby S. Miller Scholarship from The Ohio State University, the Student Dissertation Award from the Sustainability Institute at The Ohio State University, and the Prime Minister Gold Medal from the University Grants Commission of Bangladesh.

Recent updates

Jan 05, 2025

Attending the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting 2025! Join me for my poster session on January 6 at 10:15 AM in CC Hall A. I will be presenting on Spatial Heterogeneities in Healthcare Visits and their Socio-economic Determinants: A Comprehensive Analysis Using Traffic Flow Data.

Here's a quick peek at my poster. Looking forward to insightful discussions!