Our Experts

Kotaro Yamada

Kotaro Yamada is a third-year PhD student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Irvine’s Samueli School of Engineering and a Graduate Student Researcher at the Institute of Transportation Studies. Originally from Japan, Kotaro holds both a Master’s and Bachelor’s in City/Urban, Community, and Regional Planning from The University of Tokyo and an MS in Transportation Science from UC Irvine (2019). 

Kotaro’s research interests span travel demand analysis, activity-based approaches, public transit, railways, Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS), and demand-responsive transit. He specializes in planning efficient demand-responsive mobility (DRM) systems, including microtransit and transportation network companies. His work evaluates DRM as feeder services for rail in Japan by analyzing rail passenger travel-activity patterns using GPS trajectories.

Kotaro’s efforts are focused on creating efficient, equitable, and environmentally conscious mobility solutions. He aims to develop planning tools for sustainable DRM services to support transportation in areas with shrinking populations.

When Koataro isn’t conducting research, you can find him jogging, playing piano, attending classical music concerts, or traveling with his wife.