The SMART team brings together a highly skilled and diverse group of experts, with five investigators identifying as female and nine identifying as members of visible minorities. This diversity reflects Canada’s research leadership and underscores the program’s commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI).
Led by PI Prof. Sohn, the team is equipped with extensive experience managing large, multi-faceted research projects. Prof. Sohn, along with co-investigators, has successfully led several high-impact research initiatives funded by organizations such as CFI, ORF, NSERC CREATE, Alliance, Horizon, CRD, and OCE. This ensures the program benefits from well-established partnerships across academia, industry, and Indigenous communities.
Dr. Sayeh Bayat is an Assistant Professor in Biomedical and Geomatics Engineering at the University of Calgary, where she directs the Healthy City Lab. Her research sits at the intersection of AI, sensor technologies, and health systems engineering, with a focus on developing human-centred, data-enabled tools to monitor behaviour, assess cognitive health, and support aging in place. She specializes in digital phenotyping, machine learning, and context-aware sensing using multimodal realworld data—from GPS and IMUs to smartphones and wearables. Her work has led to innovations in dementia care, smart mobility, and AI-driven clinical decision support, and has been featured in international media, including BBC News, The
Telegraph, and The New York Times. Dr. Bayat collaborates with clinicians, engineers, and industry partners across Canada, the U.S., and Europe. She holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering and a BASc in Engineering Science (Aerospace Major), both from the University of Toronto.
Dr. Sunil Bisnath is a Full Professor in the Department of Earth and Space Science and Engineering at York University in Toronto, Canada. He has 30 years of experience working with GNSS. His research centres on precise GNSS-focussed positioning and navigation. Previous to York University, Professor Bisnath held the positions of geodesist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Boston, Massachusetts and assistant research scientist at the University of Southern Mississippi, NASA Stennis Space Center, Mississippi. He holds an Honours B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Surveying Science from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering from theUniversity of New Brunswick.
Dr. Bilal Farooq is an Associate Professor in Transportation Engineering at Toronto Metropolitan University and Tier II Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Disruptive Transportation Technologies and Services. He is an internationally recognized expert in smart mobility and the founding director of the Laboratory of Innovations in Transportation (LiTrans). He has published more than 175 peer-reviewed papers, four book chapters, two special journal issues, and one patent that has been issued. Dr. Farooq has trained more than 50 graduate students, many of whom have secured independent faculty positions at leading universities in Canada, US, Europe, and Asia upon completing their training. He has acquired over $108M in research grants from NSERC, SSHRC, CFI, and UK ESRC. He is the co-lead of the Place and Infrastructure theme of the Bridging Divides program, a $98M institutional program funded by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, Nature NPJ Sustainable Mobility and Transport, and Smart Cities and Society and is a Paper Review Coordinator for the Transportation Research Board (TRB). Dr. Farooq has been the recipient of Early Researcher Awards in Québec (2015) and Ontario (2018).
Dr. Il Yong Kim is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. His research interest is topology optimization with applications in aerospace and automotive structures, including multi-material lightweight design, DfAM (design for additive manufacturing), CFRP (carbon fibre reinforced polyer) modeling and optimization, and multi-physics packaging optimization. Dr. Kim received a number of awards, including the best thesis prize, the Early Researcher Award, the Experienced Humboldt Fellowship, the Research Excellence Award, and many paper awards. Prof. Kim is actively collaborating with global, multi-national companies in the aerospace and automotive industries, including Bombardier, Pratt & Whitney, Safran, General Dynamics, De Havilland Canada, General Motors, and Magna.
Dr. Manos Papagelis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the Lassonde School of Engineering, York University, where he also serves as Graduate Program Co-Director. He is a core member of the Data Mining Lab, with research spanning data mining, graph mining, natural language processing, machine learning, big data analytics, and mobility data science. His work develops novel models and methods for trajectory data mining, spatiotemporal networks, and privacy-preserving analytics, with applications to smart mobility, transportation optimization, and public health. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Toronto, and MSc and BSc degrees from the University of Crete. Prior to joining York, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and a research fellow at Yahoo! Labs Barcelona and the Institute of Computer Science, FORTH, Greece. Prof. Papagelis has published extensively in leading journals and conferences, earning multiple distinctions including two Best Paper Awards (IEEE MDM 2018, 2020), a Best Paper Runner-Up (ACM SIGSPATIAL 2023), an Outstanding Reviewer Award (ACM CIKM 2017), and the EAAI Top Cited Article Award (2005–2010). He serves as Associate Editor of Computational Intelligence and was Program Committee Co-Chair of IEEE MDM 2024. He has lectured at the University of Toronto, UC Berkeley, and York University, and received the Lassonde Educator of the Year award (2021). Through SMART, he contributes to advancing mobility innovation, societal impact, and the training of future researchers in sustainable and intelligent transportation systems.
Dr. Matthew J. Roorda is a Professor of Civil Engineering and has been faculty at the University of Toronto since 2005. He is a leading transportation researcher at the University of Toronto’s Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering and holds the Canada Research Chair in Freight Transportation and Logistics. He leads the City Logistics and Urban Freight Lab (CLUE) and chairs the Smart Freight Centre’s Scientific Advisory Committee. His research focuses on urban freight systems, sustainable logistics, and passenger travel behaviour, developing models and policy tools to improve the efficiency and sustainability of goods movement in cities. With engineering degrees from McMaster University (BEng) and the University of Toronto (MASc, PhD), he has also served as Associate Chair of U of T’s Civil Engineering Undergraduate Program. Widely published in top transportation journals, Professor Roorda’s work bridges academic research and real-world applications to support cleaner, smarter urban mobility.
Dr. Miyoung Suh is a Professor in the Department of Food and Human Nutritional Sciences at the University of Manitoba and serves as a Principal Investigator in both the Division of Neurodegenerative and Neurodevelopmental Disorders and the Canadian Centre for Agri-Food Research in Health and Medicine at the St. Boniface Hospital Research Centre. She is also the nutrition lead for the Canada-Israel International Fetal Alcohol Consortium, a global initiative focused on mitigating the impact of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder through perinatal nutrition strategies. Her ongoing research explores the critical roles of dietary lipids in the development and function of neural cells in the brain and retina, particularly under conditions of alcohol exposure, diabetes, and obesity. Additionally, she serves as a scientific health research liaison for the Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN) in The Pas, Manitoba. Her recent collaborative with OCN on a project to grow functional vegetables using smart vertical farm technology holds transformative potential in combating chronic diseases, especially diabetes, which is prevalent in northern communities. Overall, her research lays the groundwork for optimizing nutrition and developing dietary strategies that benefit both targeted clinical populations and the general public. Her work is currently supported by CIHR, NSERC-Horizon, and the CIHR Healthy Cities Research Training Platform (HCRTP).
Dr. Hina Tabassum is an Associate Professor with the Lassonde School of Engineering, York University, Toronto, where she joined as an Assistant Professor in 2018. She was appointed as a Visiting Faculty with University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, in 2024, and the York Research Chair of 5G/6G-enabled mobility and sensing applications in 2023, for five years. She received a Ph.D. degree from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, and has coauthored more than 120 refereed articles in well-reputed IEEE journals, magazines, and conferences. Her current research interests include multi-band 6G wireless communications and sensing networks, connected and autonomous systems, AI-enabled network mobility, and resource management solutions. She has been selected as the IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer for the term 2025–2026. She is listed in Stanford’s list of the World’s Top Two-Percent Researchers in 2021–2024. She was the recipient of the Lassonde Innovation Early-Career Researcher Award in 2023 and the N2Women: Rising Stars in Computer Networking and Communications in 2022. She was the Founding Chair of the Special Interest Group on THz communications in the IEEE Communications Society–Radio Communications Committee. Currently, she is serving as an Area Editor of the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society and IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials as well as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, and IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.
Dr. Yili (Kelly) Tang is an Assistant Professor at the University of Western Ontario (Canada) and Director of the Mobility Technology Research Group, focusing on travel mobility and human behaviors, transportation modeling and optimization, artificial intelligence and game theory. Dr. Tang and her team are actively engaged in diverse academia and industry in transportation, AI, automation and robotics worldwide in Canada, US, Germany, Austria, Denmark and Hong Kong. Dr. Tang leads and co-leads collaborative research grants, for which her group’s research studies have been published in cross-disciplinary journals in transportation engineering, economics, and energy domains, and have been awarded the most cited articles and best paper awards in . Dr. Tang also serves as a guest editor in Travel Behaviour and Society and Transportmetrica A: Transport Science. She has been a board member of Canadian and international organizations including Vice President of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Saskatchewan Section, Secretary and Treasurer of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Railway Application Section, Vice Chair of the Transportation Division in Canadian Society of Civil Engineering, and Committee Member of Transportation Research Board in National Academies US. She is also an affiliate member of the Centre for Multi-Hazard Risk and Resilience at the University of Western Ontario and the Center for Smart Infrastructure at UC Berkeley.
Dr. Ping Wang is a Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, York University, and a Tier 2 York Research Chair. Prior to that, she was with Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, from 2008 to 2018. Her recent research interests focus on integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques into communications networks. Her scholarly works have been widely disseminated through top-ranked IEEE journals/conferences and received the IEEE Communications Society Best Survey Paper Award in 2023, and the Best Paper Awards from IEEE prestigious conference WCNC in 2012, 2020 and 2022, from IEEE Communication Society: Green Communications & Computing Technical Committee in 2018, from IEEE flagship conference ICC in 2007. She has been serving as the associate editor-in-chief for IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, an area editor for IEEE Transactions on Network Science and
Engineering, and an editor for several reputed journals, including IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Distinguished Speaker of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS). She is also the Chair of the Education Committee of IEEE VTS.
