Fortifying traffic networks against disaster

Mahalia Miller is a PhD student in the Stanford Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research focuses on network analysis, specifically how earthquakes might effect traffic networks. She was awarded a Stanford Graduate Fellowship and a National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship for her studies.

Mahalia’s fellowships have provided her with an opportunity to explore interests in other fields and bring it into her research. Through a class in computer science, she discovered that algorithms that have been optimized to study social networks are applicable to the study of transportation networks. Mahalia’s research will help inform the decisions of the state department of transportation as well as local transportation agencies. The idea is that the network will be stronger, so that when a real disaster strikes, we'll all be better off.

In her free time, Mahalia enjoys running on campus and around Palo Alto. When she gets stuck with her research, she takes a run to one of the bridges in her research database. She says it helps her get an intuitive feel for her research.