Wenwen Zhang

Wenwen Zhang, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, where she has been since 2020. Her research focuses on the social and policy impacts of emerging transportation technologies, leveraging data science and visualization techniques to address urban planning challenges. She holds a Ph.D. in City & Regional Planning from Georgia Institute of Technology, along with multiple master’s degrees in Civil Engineering, Computational Science & Engineering, and City & Regional Planning from the same institution, and a B.E. in City & Regional Planning from Zhejiang University.

Dr. Zhang’s work examines disruptive transportation innovations like automated vehicles, ride-hailing, and micromobility, alongside their implications for sustainability and urban development. Her research also explores environmental health correlations, such as the impact of greenspace on cardiovascular and mental health, utilizing street-view imagery and deep learning methodologies. She has published extensively, including 16 journal articles, 15 conference proceedings, and a book chapter. Her work has been featured in journals like Transportation Research Part D, where she also served as a guest editor.

Key research themes include urban modeling, data analytics, and sustainable development. Her recent studies investigate how greenspace exposure correlates with health outcomes using large-scale datasets, while her transportation studies focus on infrastructure design (e.g., bicycle lanes) and pandemic-era shifts in work and mobility patterns. Dr. Zhang has collaborated on projects such as the Local Climate Zone mapping initiative for the continental U.S. and studies on shared autonomous vehicles’ impact on urban parking demand.

She previously served as an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech and a research assistant at Georgia Tech’s Center for Spatial Planning Analytics and Visualization. Her expertise spans geospatial analysis, public policy, and quantitative methods, with a focus on translating data-driven insights into actionable urban planning strategies.