Cities of the Future
Human-Centered Cities Lab
Our lab is interested in the development of human-centered smart cities where we work on humanizing the relationship between cities of the future and humans by understanding, modeling, and enhancing the quality of the interaction between humans and smart cities.
Our work spans across the interaction between humans and autonomous vehicles, intelligent transportation systems, and smart buildings. If you are interested in collaborating with us, please do not hesitate to send us an email through Arash.tavakoli@villanova.edu.
Human-AV Interaction
Our work paves the way for an efficient and safe human-autonomous-vehicle interaction through multimodal sensing, rigorous experimentation, and predictive modeling applied to driver state.
Human Infrastructure Interaction
Our work intelligently attempts to identify the effect of the various elements of the transportation infrastructure on human well-being and to propose infrastructural changes that can promote human well-being in the long run.
Human Well-being Analysis
Through using various multimodal sensing mechanisms, our group attempts to uncover various aspects of human well-being and its interaction with the built environment resulting from civil engineering products.
WhO we are
Human-Centered Cities Lab
We are a group of researchers at Villanova University, College of Engineering. We welcome any researcher from any background within or outside of Engineering who is also interested in Human-Centered Cities Lab to join our efforts. To inquire about current openings in the lab, please email Arash.tavakoli@villanova.edu.
Our lab is centered on mutual respect, honesty, and open communication. We deeply value collaboration with other researchers within the College, Villanova University, and beyond. Human-centered Cities Lab fosters an atmosphere that encourages personal growth and supports your academic endeavors.
NEWS
- New Paper Published! Excited about our new study, Psycho-behavioral Responses to Urban Scenes: An Exploration through Eye-tracking published in Cities. Read the full paper here. (November 2024)
- New Lab Member! Blue has joined the Human-Centered Cities Lab. Blue is interested in computer vision, and collaborating with humans. Most of Blue’s free time goes to dancing and training with computer vision models. Welcome Blue! (October 2024)
- Interview! Dr. Tavakoli was interviewed by the Philadelphia Inquirer regarding the recent fatal cyclist crash in Philadelphia. Read more! (July 2024)
- Internal Grant! Human-Centered Cities Lab, with colleagues, has been awarded the Sports and Performance Engineering Seed Award for our proposal “Towards Safe Collaborative Construction Sites: Real-time Mental Performance Modeling for Safe Worker-Robot Teaming”! (July 2024)
- Academic Visit! Dr. Tavakoli conducted a seminar on Human-centered Cities at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne during his time as a visiting Assistant Professor in Switzerland (July 2024)
- New Lab Member! Shiva Azimi joined the Human-Centered Cities Lab to work on her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering. Welcome Shiva! Read more about Shiva’s research interests here! (June 2024)
- External Grant! Human-centered Cities Lab has been awarded the prestigious Engineering Research Initiation (ERI) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the proposal “From Data to Design: Enhancing Pedestrian Infrastructure for Well-Being through Mobile Sensing and Experience Sampling in the Wild”, $200,000. Read more here. (March 2024)
- Internal Grant! Dr. Tavakoli has been awarded the faculty career development award from the College of Engineering at Villanova University to travel to Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne and work on a collaborative project with Dr. Andrew Sonta on human walking behavior. (January 2024)
- Internal Grant! Dr. Tavakoli and a team consisting of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Psychological and Brain Sciences at Villanova University have been awarded the CATALYST grant for their proposal “Steering through Time: Leveraging Longitudinal Psycho-behavioral Data for Driver Performance Prediction Under Cognitive Load At Different Levels of Autonomy”. (October 2023)
- New Lab Member! Yasaman Hakiminejad joined the Human-Centered Cities Lab to work on her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering. Welcome Yasaman! Read more about Yasaman’s research interests here! (August 2024)
- HELLO WORLD! Dr. Tavakoli started working at Villanova University as an Assistant Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering! (August 2023)
Contact Information:
Email: Arash.tavakoli@villanova.edu
Address: 800 E Lancaster Ave – Drosdick 352 Villanova, PA 19085