Event Date
The current academic reward system creates a fundamental misalignment between research incentives focused on individual productivity and science's true objective of advancing collective knowledge. The growing open science movement has highlighted this tension across disciplines, calling for systemic changes in how we value scholarly contributions. Drawing from my research journey in transportation engineering, this talk aims to engage the audience to reflect on their experiences navigating these tensions in civil and environmental engineering and beyond. Despite tremendous growth in publications, fields like travel behavior research haven't translated this output into consolidated knowledge on critical questions. Drawing from other fields, three paths to action are proposed: open science through data/code sharing, standardized benchmarking infrastructures, and more accountable research practices that reward knowledge consolidation. We advocate for starting small and demonstrate these approaches through a Mode Choice Benchmarking Sandbox that enables direct comparison of modeling methods. By addressing the gap between researchers' intentions to share resources and actual implementation, we can transform how we build knowledge collectively. The presentation invites audience input on achieving both social and academic impact through rigorous papers focused on doing good for the world.
Bio
Joan Walker is the T.Y. and Margaret Lin Professor of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, where she currently serves as Chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research focuses on travel behavior and data analytics to understand and predict human decision-making in transportation systems, with the goal of improving efficiency, equity, and sustainability in urban mobility. She grew up in Davis, received her Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from UC Berkeley and her Master's and Ph.D. degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from MIT. She is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Institute of Transportation Studies Faculty of the Year, the Zephyr Leadership Award, the NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). She has served as Chair of the Committee on Transportation Demand Forecasting (ADB40) for the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Co-Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Global Metropolitan Studies, and Acting Director of UC Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS). She co-founded the nonprofit Zephyr Foundation working to advance travel analysis to improve society.