Engineering a Path for the Forgotten: Meet the Professor Transforming Transportation Access – Dr. Kyung “Kate” Hyun

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Title: Associate Professor
Tenured: Yes
Age: 40
Education: B.S and M.S. in Urban Planning and Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea; PhD. University of California, Irvine (Civil and Environmental Engineering)
Career mentors: Dr. Stephen Mattingly, UTA; Dr. Melanie Sattler, UTA
Words of wisdom/advice for new faculty: “Stay resilient and persistent. Aim for steady progress.”

The transition between South Korea and Irvine, California was, at first, jarring to Dr. Kyung “Kate” Hyun, an associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), and deputy director of The Center for Transportation, Equity, Decisions, and Dollars at the U.S. Department of Transportation’s University Transportation Center.

“I didn’t have a car of course. I took a bus to the DMV office, and it was a 90-minute journey,” says Hyun. “Later, I found out, that’s just a 15-minute drive! That was an eye-opening experience.”

Car culture is even more rooted where she lives and works now at UTA. Arlington, a bustling city of almost 400,000 people that sits between Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas has no mass transit system. Hyun found herself wanting to use her knowledge in transportation engineering to do more than just think about freight traffic or highway traffic—she wanted to connect with the people of her city.

Hyun began branching outside of her department, de-siloing herself to learn more about populations often neglected or pushed to the margins in society, like low-income or single-parent families, and the elderly.

“How we learn about people’s transportation behavior is a survey, like a census, asking how many cars you have, where and why you drive. But if you don’t have any means, you can’t answer those questions,” says Hyun. “If you don’t have any means, the whole survey is dropping [that population]. They say, ‘I don’t travel,’ and that’s the end. [The survey] doesn’t ask why you don’t travel, the why behind it.”

Understanding the why behind individuals’ inability to travel unlocks a greater understanding for how transportation, or a lack of it, impacts communities, says Hyun. As an example, without steady or reliable transportation, older adults might opt out of important doctor’s visits or getting groceries. Hyun’s determination to include the human-being in transportation engineering makes her scholarship stand out, says Dr. Vistasp Karbhari, professor of civil engineering, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and past president at UTA.

“She is truly causing a re-envisioning of how transportation is being viewed and how decisions, including those of funding and resources, should be made to not only ensure equity but to enhance it and raise communities that were previously under-served and neglected,” says Karbhari, adding that Hyun’s work is truly interdisciplinary. “She not only works with faculty in engineering, but also across disciplines with colleagues in social work, nursing and health, education, and architecture or public planning.”

Hyun says she specifically incorporates students in her work because “they’re going to be future teachers, so I want them to also learn about our issues, engineering problems. We collaborate by looking at the same transportation problems in different ways.”

This includes culturally responsive teaching, as Hyun understands different populations have their own needs and understanding of the world.

“Every culture has transportation,” says Hyun, which makes it a great way “to integrate different cultural components, to learn and discuss transportation. Our students are going to be the decision makers, they’re going to work at the city or the consulting company, build the roads and improve infrastructure.”

Using an equity-based mindset for her research has helped Hyun dissect and evaluate the efficacy and fairness of evacuation routes, which are particularly important in big cities like Houston during hurricane season. She asks questions about who has access to transit in certain areas, what roads flood more often and create dangerous situations.

“I try to provide this information to stakeholders in the city and state to raise their awareness around the issues,” says Hyun, making it clear that these populations should not be overlooked in planning.

Hyun says she is continually learning about different needs and gaps in transportation. While she has focused research on the elderly or older populations, she is now taking on another aspect of aging: dementia, and how it can be impacted by a need for transportation. Ultimately, Hyun wants to take her work to spaces and places it can make the most change, informing policy makers and stakeholders how they can “provide better mobility and accessibility,” says Hyun. “Because accessibility is opportunities.”