Dr. Nufar Avni, urban planner and geographer, joined the department during the 2020 academic year.

Nufar's research interests focus on justice and spatial equity in planning processes, urban regeneration, urban citizenship, planning in the global south and planning in contested cities. Her research combines methods, theories and concepts from urban planning, urban geography, gender studies and urban sociology. In her doctoral dissertation completed at the School of Urban Planning at McGill University, Canada (2018), Nufar explored issues of social and environmental justice in waterfront redevelopment projects in Washington, D.C and Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Nufar later researched issues of urban citizenship, divided communities and activism in East Jerusalem as part of a Marie Curie Horizon 2020 grant (2018-2020).

In addition to her main research interests, Nufar is a member of the Horizon 2020 COST ACTION group on Placemaking and Digitization and an international research group exploring nationalism in cities.

Dr. Shira Bukchin-Peles conducts interdisciplinary research in the area of sustainable development, with an emphasis on food security and agriculture. She investigates environmental issues from a technological, behavioural, social and educational perspective. Most of her research has significant empirical components and applied aspects.

A major part of Shira's research deals with the developing world, and she led a variety of field studies,  e.g., in Senegal, Nepal and Ethiopia. Her doctoral research has focused on the relationship between personal resources and the adoption of sustainable technologies and methods by farmers in developing countries.

Sigal Kaplan is Associate Professor of Transport behavior and Smart Transport Systems at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prior to joining the Hebrew University of Jerusalem she Graduated as a PhD in transportation engineering from the Technion, and worked in the Technical University of Denmark, and the Technical University of  Dresden, where she stayed as a guest professor as part of the "Eleonore Treftz" excellence program for promoting women scientists. She is an external collaborator with the Transportation Investigation Center (TRANSyT)  in Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. She also served as an AIANI-Fellow in the University of Innsbruck, Austria. She collaborates with researchers in Spain, Austria, Denmark,  South-Korea, Germany, The Netherlands, Portugal and Brazil. Her research focuses on understanding transportation demand patterns and spatial choices in urban planning as a function of the physical, social, and institutional and policy environment. Sigal is interested in the various aspects of sustainable development including active travel, women and gender in Transportation, traffic safety and vulnerable road users, equity assessment, public transport user-operator interface, Mobility-as-a-Service, technology acceptance of electric vehicles and multi-modal travel apps, gamification in transportation. In urban planning she mainly explores residential choice and inter-regional migration of knowledge-workers. Sigal conducted studies in Israel, Europe (Denmark, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Spain, and Portugal), South America (Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico), China, United States, New Zealand and Australia. Sigal has extensive experience with the statistical and econometric modelling in the area of discrete choice, structural equation models, and advanced data mining techniques and her studies are based both on revealed and stated preferences. Sigal has published 76 papers in scientific international journals and has about 114 peer-reviewed contributions to international conferences. She has supervised 27 graduate students.  As part of her work at DTU-Transport, Sigal worked on several the SELECT project focusing on suitable electro-mobility for commercial transport,  “Improving road safety” (IMPROSA) for the Danish Council for Strategic Research, “Analyses of activity-based travel chains and sustain-able mobility (ACTUM)” for the Danish Council for Strategic Research, “Tools for transport forecasting and scenario testing (TRANSTOOLS 3)” for the Seventh Framework Program of the European Commission, SUSTAIN for National Sustainable Transport Planning, and "Integrated Public Transport Optimization and Planning" (IPTOP). Her recent research grants include exploring the factors affecting the installation of advanced vehicle safety systems among socio-economically weak groups, developing a New Route Choice Set Generation method based on Ecological Rationality: a neural network approach, and using gamification as a tool for promoting sustainable use of Mobility-as-a-Service.