Architecture-East Building, 204-D

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Specialization Area: Transportation

Gulsah Akar is the Chair of the School of City and Regional Planning. Professor Akar conducts research on sustainable urban mobility. Her work led to various research projects and publications, from investigating built environment and travel connections using state of the art data collection technologies, to measuring access and equity, demographic differences in travel outcomes, and adoption of new mobility technologies. Her research received grant support from various sponsors including Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) and National Science Foundation (NSF). Professor Akar co-authored over 35 peer-reviewed articles in top-tier journals.

Akar joined Georgia Tech in 2021. Before joining Georgia Tech, she was a professor of City and Regional Planning at The Ohio State University (OSU). At OSU, she led the PhD Program of her unit from 2015 to 2021. She served as a Research Program Lead at OSU’s Sustainability Institute, providing direction for research on Smart and Resilient Communities across the university from 2019 to 2021. She was the Editor of Journal of Planning Literature from 2015 to 2021. She served as the Transportation Track Co-Chair of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, and currently acts on multiple Transportation Research Board Committees.

Akar received her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. She received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees both from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.