We ae delighted to welcome Professor Piyushimita (Vonu) Thakuriah to the PASCAL Board. Vonu is a world-renowned expert on sustainable, socially just transport, and on the use of information, especially big data, to solve urban problems. PASCAL can benefit from Vonu's international experience at the cutting edge of research with immediate practical and policy relevance.

Several years ago, Vonu left an important academic position at the University of Illinois-Chicago Circle to join the University of Glasgow, where she has been the Ch2m Chair of Transport and Professor of Urban Studies. She launched and directs the Urban Big Data Centre that links several universities in the UK and the US. In October, she returns to the United States as the new Dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey.  

On a personal note, as someone educated at Princeton (just twenty minutes from Rutgers if there is no traffic on Route One) and with long-standing family ties to New Jersey, I know that New Jersey needs to look at new and different ways of planning for growth. Remember Hurricane Sandy, and the destruction it brought along New Jersey’s Atlantic seashore?