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Celebrating the Success of rCITI’s 2025 PhD Graduates

At the Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation (rCITI), School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UNSW Sydney, we take great pride in the achievements of our PhD students who are shaping the future of research and innovation.

Published on the 27 August 2025
Maliheh Tabasi and Taha Hossien Rashidi Graduation
Photo: Dr Maliheh Tabasi with supervisor Prof Taha Hossein Rashidi before Engineering graduation ceremony 20 August 2025. @UNSW Sydney Photographer: Maryam Bostanara

This year, three outstanding graduates have successfully completed their doctoral journeys, each making a remarkable contributions to the transport scholarly domain:

  • Dr Maliheh Tabasi advanced understanding of travel time valuation in Sydney and Chicago through RUM and TUE frameworks, innovative data collection, and modelling, offering critical insights for transport policy and investment decisions. Her work provides fresh perspectives that can transform how transport benefits are assessed.
    Thesis Title: Investigating the Value of Travel Time Saving: From the Random Utility Maximisation Framework to the Econometric Time-Use Framework
  • Dr Esta Qiu developed the “Equity over Time” optimisation framework, balancing efficiency and equity in public transport through multi-period bus frequency allocation, justice theory metrics, and scalable, computationally efficient solutions.
    Thesis Title: Multi-period Bus Frequency Optimisation Based on Equity over Time
  • Dr Aditya Paul focused on developing data-driven optimisation methods for dynamic, uncertain transport and logistics resource allocation, using Markov decision processes, mixed-integer programming, and machine learning–guided surrogate functions to enhance efficiency and decision-making.
    Thesis Title: Data-driven Optimisation of Dynamic Resource Allocation in Transport and Logistics

Their perseverance, curiosity, and commitment to research excellence exemplify the spirit of UNSW. We congratulate them on their success and look forward to seeing the impact of their work beyond the university.