AI and Transportation Research: Aligning Innovation with Impact

Biju Kewalram, Chief Digital and Transformation Officer, Transformation Core

Biju Kewalram is the Chief Digital and Transformation Officer of Transformation Core as well as the Chief Strategy Officer of Brightstar Care of Huntington Beach. Biju Kewalram is also the former co-CEO of Vanguard Logistics Services, a leading global NVOCC, where he spent more than a decade in various capacities. His previous international experience includes positions as CEO of logistics application developer FreightSoft; CIO of NACA Logistics; and COO for Vanguard Logistics. He has expertise in areas including technology systems for logistics and freight movement that help businesses increase efficiency. He is a strong proponent of the symbiosis between operations, customer service, and technology.

(Moderator) Karen Philbrick, PhD, Executive Director, Mineta Transportation Institute 

Dr. Karen Philbrick is the executive director of the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) at San José State University. Karen Philbrick leads two competitively selected multi-university consortia: the California State University Transportation Consortium (CSUTC), which unifies the surface transportation research and workforce development efforts of the 23-campus California State University system, and the Climate Change and Extreme Events Training and Research (CCEETR) Program funded by the Federal Railroad Administration. 

Prior to joining MTI, Karen Philbrick shaped the field of transportation in a variety of roles, including as assistant director of the National Center for Intermodal Transportation at the University of Denver. She has been appointed four times by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation (Secretaries LaHood, Foxx, Chao, and Buttigieg) to sit on the USDOT Transit Advisory Committee for Safety (TRACS) where she chaired the FTA Administrator’s Tasking 14-02, which identified key elements of a safety management system approach to fatigue management.

Kevin Kane, Planning Supervisor for Demographics and Growth Visioning, Southern CA Association of Governments (SCAG)

Kevin Kane is the program manager for demographics and housing policy at the Southern California Association of Governments. His responsibilities include regional demographic forecasting, analysis, and regional housing policy development. Kevin also leads in-house research efforts at SCAG which include applied empirical analyses of travel demand management, telecommuting, e-commerce, development finance, and a range of data-intensive “Smart City” initiatives.

Kevin received his Ph.D. in Geography from Arizona State University’s School of Geographical Sciences & Urban Planning, and his Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science, Economics, and Political Science from Northwestern University. He recently served as a postdoctoral fellow at UC-Irvine’s Metropolitan Futures Initiative where he led research efforts to combine “big data”, Geographic Information Science, and spatial statistical methods to understand long-term social, economic, and built environment changes in Southern California. Kevin is currently on the faculty of the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy where he teaches a course on big data applications in planning and development.