Venu Garikapati joined NREL in 2017 and today leads the Transportation Modeling and Metrics team. An expert in the development of new analytical and computational modeling systems for forecasting travel demand under a wide variety of technological, multimodal, and policy scenarios, his research focuses on understanding the impacts of disruptive technologies on travel behavior and the role that big data analytics can play in enhancing the performance of transportation systems. Additionally, he played an instrumental role in developing the Mobility Energy Productivity Metric, the Freight Mobility Energy Productivity Metric, and a toolkit for modeling and simulating automated mobility districts.

Research Interests

Activity-based travel behavior and time use analysis

Multimodal transportation planning and policy analysis

Travel demand modeling and forecasting

Econometric and statistical methods for transportation data analysis

Mobility and energy impacts of disruptive transportation technologies

Sustainable transportation and urban development

Education

Ph.D., Civil, Environmental, and Sustainable Engineering, Arizona State University

M. Tech., Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology

B. Tech., Civil Engineering, Acharya Nagarjuna University

Professional Experience

Project Leader, Transportation Data Analytics, NREL (2017–Present)

Assistant Research Professor, Arizona State University (2016)

Postdoctoral Fellow, Georgia Institute of Technology (2015–2016)

Associations and Memberships

Member, Transportation Research Board’s Standing Committee on Effects of Information and Communication Technologies on Travel Choices

Member, Transportation Research Board’s Standing Committee on Statewide/National Transportation Data and Information Systems 

Member, Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honors Society

Featured Work

Data-Driven Simulation-Based Planning for Electric Airport Shuttle Systems: A Real-World Case Study, Applied Energy (2023)

An Optimization-Based Planning Tool for On-Demand Mobility Service Operations, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation (2022)

Shared Automated Vehicle Fleet Operations for First-Mile Last-Mile Transit Connections with Dynamic Pooling, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems (2022)

The Role of Mobility Data Hubs in an Integrated Decarbonized Transportation Future, IEEE Green Technologies Conference (2021)

Estimating Energy Bounds for Adoption of Shared Micromobility, Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment (2021)

Advanced Computing, Data Science, and Artificial Intelligence Research Opportunities for Energy-Focused Transportation Science, NREL Technical Report (2021)

Reducing Ridesourcing Empty Vehicle Travel with Future Travel Demand Prediction, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies (2020)

A Novel and Practical Method to Quantify the Quality of Mobility: The Mobility Energy Productivity Metric, Transportation Research Board Annual Conference (2020)

A Comprehensive Approach to Measure the Mobility Energy Productivity of Freight Transport, Transportation Research Board Annual Conference (2020)

Mobility Data and Models Informing Smart Cities, NREL Technical Report (2019)

Awards and Honors

Team Award for the Development of the Mobility Energy Productivity Metric, U.S. Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Office (2019)

Best Poster Award for “Quantifying the Mobility and Energy Benefits of Automated Mobility Districts Using Microscopic Traffic Simulation,” American Society of Civil Engineers’ International Conference on Transportation and Development (2018)