Professor Charisma Choudhury

Can you tell us about your research, work and expertise in Southeast Asia?

My area of expertise is in travel behaviour modelling. Currently I am focusing on leveraging emerging data sources for travel behaviour modelling, especially in the context of the Global South. These datasets range from passively generated data sources (e.g. mobile phone records, smart cards, video images, etc.) to physiological sensor data (e.g. skin conductance, EEG recordings, etc.). Modelling travel behaviour using these data sources involved developing methodologies to combine data science, ubiquitous computing and choice modelling techniques.
My research work in the context of Southeast Asia primarily includes collaborative works with students from Indonesia. This includes Dr Andyka Kusuma who worked on driving behaviour modelling and Faza Fawzan Bastarianto who worked on developing tour-based travel behaviour models in the context of Jakarta for his Masters. Faza is currently pursuing his PhD on developing an agent-based simulation tool for Jakarta.
Prior to joining Leeds, I had worked on developing traffic microsimulation tools for Kuala Lumpur as part of the MIT-Malaysia University of Science and Technology collaboration programme.

Any anecdote you would like to share?

My own PhD journey started with traffic microsimulation in Southeast Asia (in 2003) while my first PhD student was also from Southeast Asia (in 2013)!