The METRANS Transportation Center is pleased to welcome Rui Zhang, who joined the student assistant team earlier this semester.

Zhang is a first-year Master of Planning student in the Price School of Public Policy at USC. She is a recent graduate of Wuhan University with a bachelor’s degree in urban planning, and is working primarily on the METRANS events team, managing schedules, coordinating logistics, and ensuring the success of the many events that are held on campus.

Early in her academic career, Zhang focused on the architecture design aspects of urban planning, but as she progressed through the program she became much more interested in transportation as a result of training in GIS and urban geography courses.

“Transportation became fascinating to me when I was contributing to a group research project on the micro-circulation buses of Wuhan City. Located in central China, Wuhan is a major transportation hub and connects with national, regional, and local transportation projects. I started to concentrate on learning what transportation means to people’s lives,” said Zhang.

Her undergraduate dissertation “Analysis of the Commuting Potential of Public Transport Based on Social Security Data—Case Study of Nanhu Neighborhood” further enhanced her understanding of the conveniences and barriers that transportation can represent, and solidified her interest in the field.

In addition to her experience throughout mainland China, Zhang spent an exchange semester at the University of Hong Kong, as well as time in the seaside city of Bournemouth, located in southern England. Her diversity of experiences in Asia and Europe led her to USC, where she is excited to learn about the challenges and opportunities in Los Angeles.

After graduation, Zhang plans to pursue a career in transportation planning in the private sector with a focus on GIS. “The experience of working and learning abroad helped me realize that I like to work with people from different backgrounds, and I’m very excited to work with diverse teams in the future.”

Eric Tunell

Eric Tunell is a Master of Planning student in the Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. He currently works for the METRANS Transportation Center, a joint partnership between USC and California State University Long Beach, and has worked previously in communications for the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving and for National Geographic. He can be reached via email or on LinkedIn.