Sustainable Urban Systems
Dr. Kari Watkins
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Dr. Kari Edison Watkins is an Associate Professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California at Davis. Her research and teaching center in multi-modal transportation planning and the use of technology and design in transportation, especially in the promotion of active (biking, walking) and shared (transit, rideshare) modes. Dr. Watkins worked for a decade as a senior transportation engineer on projects throughout the transit industry, and then completed a PhD at the University of Washington, where she co-created the award-winning OneBusAway program to provide transit rider information tools and assess their impacts. She was an Assistant then Associate Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology for eleven years, before moving to her true home at UC Davis in 2022.
A Message to Students and Parents
When I was 16 years old, I got the chance to study abroad in Europe. As a teenager growing up in the motor city of Detroit, living abroad changed my world. I was waiting for the freedom that my driver’s license could bring when I suddenly lived in a place where I would never need it. I could bike everywhere I wanted to go locally and take trains to get to the next city over. I studied Civil Engineering in college because I wanted to create systems like that in my own country.
Years later, as a professor who studies bikeability in cities, I had always wanted to visit the Netherlands, the place known for the best bike infrastructure in the world. When I finally got a chance to go, I was amazed all over again and I vowed to bring students there year after year in hopes that it might change their world as well. For many years, I ran a similar study abroad program at Georgia Tech while I was a professor there. My recent move to Davis, the bike capital of America, has made me even more excited for students to see the place that inspired the transportation system on our campus and in our academic home city."
Dr. Jay Lund
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Jay Lund is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California – Davis. He works mostly on water and environmental systems, ranging from floods and droughts to environmental restoration, reservoir systems, groundwater management, hydropower, and ship navigation. He has been extensively involved in the management of water and environmental problems in California, and also has worked on such problems globally. He especially enjoys seeing how the technical aspects of infrastructure systems fit into the economics and policy systems of societies within a regional landscape. He enjoys seeing how the analysis of such systems can help difficult policy and management discussions and decisions.
A Message to Students and Parents
I really love how water and environmental problems are universal and how different societies have struggled and solved these problems over time. As an avid sailor, I enjoy water and environmental problems from almost any perspective. Living abroad as a student and professional has helped me understand how real human and environmental systems operate and can be improved from engineering and management perspectives and has brought great personal and professional benefits to me and my family. Seeing the world from many perspectives is exciting, interesting, and professionally valuable."