Doina Olaru is a Prof in the Department of Management and Organisations at the UWA Business School. She was educated in Romania, at the University “Politehnica” of Bucharest and has both academia and industry experience. Doina worked as railway engineer for the Romanian State Railways and as a Post Doctoral Research Scientist with CSIRO. Her teaching in Romania and Australia covered transport planning and operation, optimisation and simulation, data analysis, decision making, computer modelling applications in different areas of business. Doina has published academic papers in international journals and presented at leading international conferences on topics such as transport planning methods, travel and activity analysis, alternative fuel and vehicle technologies, business networks, and environmental and social impacts of transport. She is also maintaining good collaboration with practitioners and decision makers, with the objective of better integrating land-use and transport and promoting more sustainable transport solutions.

Participant

ARC Competitive Grants

ARC ITTC AVR3 - IC230100001 - Glaser, S. Schroeter, R., Braunl, T., Worrall, S., Nahavandi, S., Rakotonirainy, A., McLennan, C., Berrio Perez, J.S., Li, X., Shariati, N., Hettiarachchi, I., Yasmin, S., Olaru, D., Foth, M., Bhaskar, A., Peynot, T., Milford, M., Roberts, P., Shan, M., Tomitsch, M., Sarkar, S., Welch, M., Reilly, M., Kuo, J., Lenne, M., Trivedi, A., Christensen, I., McLennan, K., McHenry, M., Winson, D., Taube, R., Nicholls, E., Kearton, G., Kosmas, O., Lai, A., David, R., Riotto, M., Cody, A., Doepel, D., Pfeiffer, S., Keely, D., Nicholson, J., Elhenawy, M., Demmel, S., Creighton, D., Zhou, H., Kruger, K. - 'ARC Training Centre for Automated Vehicles in Rural and Remote Regions' 

ARC Linkage Project - LP190100558 - 'Map My Say - An innovative participatory mapping tool for TOD evaluation'

ARC Discovery Project - DP130100570 - 'Modelling Network Innovation Performance Capability: A Multidisciplinary Approach'

ARC Linkage Project – LP110201150 - 'Modelling and evaluating the joint access mode and train station choice. Park and Ride' 

ARC Linkage Project - LP100100436 - 'Analysis and modelling of driving patterns for limited-range electric vehicles'

ARC Linkage Project - LP0562422 – 'Impacts of Transit Led Development in a New Rail Corridor'

Industry Grants

Australian Research Data Commons - 'Australian Transport Research Cloud (ATRC) Platform'

iMOVE Intelligent Transport Systems Australia ex Cooperative Research Centre CRC 2021-2022 - 'Identifying opportunities to address transport disadvantage in Perth'

iMOVE Intelligent Transport Systems Australia ex Cooperative Research Centre CRC 2020-2022 - 'Working from Home - Changes in Transport Demand - Perth'

iMOVE Intelligent Transport Systems Australia ex Cooperative Research Centre CRC 2019-2021 - 'Managing transport system investment risk: enhancing patronage predictions and adapting strategic asset management and appraisal processes to account for emerging trends and uncertainty'

iMOVE Intelligent Transport Systems Australia ex Cooperative Research Centre CRC 2020-2021 - 'Smart Transport Technology Roadmap'

iMOVE Intelligent Transport Systems Australia ex Cooperative Research Centre CRC 2017-2019 - 'Enhanced short and longer term network performance prediction capabilities through data-driven analytics and simulation'

RailSmart Wanneroo Planning Support System - Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Smart Cities and Suburbs Program 2017-2019 - 'Smart Cities' Wanneroo

WA Department of Planning 2016-2017 - 'Addressing Future Uncertainties of Perth at 3.5 Million: What-If Scenarios for Mass Transit'

WA Department of Transport grant 2014-2016 - 'Mass Transit Plan for Perth at 3.5 Million and Beyond'

The Royal Automotive Club of WA 2014-2015 - 'Activity Centre Accessibility'

Other Grants

Healthway WA 2018-2019 - 'Active travel: Using wearable technology to analyse daily travel behaviour' 

Awards from the UWA Business School

'Prototypical Analysis of trust in AI: An Autonomous Vehicle Case', 2021

'A Constructive Technology Assessment of the Adoption of Autonomous Vehicle Innovations in Australia', 2019

'Perception of autonomous vehicles and vehicle ownership models, BHP Research Awards', 2017 

'Do autonomous vehicles spell the end of private vehicle ownership' 2015

'Determinants and impacts of light-rail access as a new transport mode. Case study Perth' 2013

'Valuation of housing and location attributes: Establishing prior estimates using hedonic regression analysis' 2011

'Measuring travel behaviour with GPS (Global Positioning system) data' 2006

2003 - 2005, Post Doctoral Research Scientist - Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) – Atmospheric Research
2000 - 2002, Lecturer - UWA Business School
1995 - 1999, Assistant Professor - “Politehnica” University of Bucharest
1989 - 1995, Engineer- Romanian State Railways

Industry Relevance 

iMOVE Intelligent Transport Systems Australia ex Cooperative Research Centre CRC 2022-2024 - "A data-driven approach to improve roundabout modelling using drone video content analytics”

iMOVE Intelligent Transport Systems Australia ex Cooperative Research Centre CRC 2020-2022 - 'Working from Home - Changes in Transport Demand - Perth' (Australia)

Australian Data Research Commons 2021-2023 - 'Australian Transport Research Cloud (ATRC) Platform'

iMOVE Intelligent Transport Systems Australia ex Cooperative Research Centre CRC 2021-2022 - 'Identifying opportunities to address transport disadvantage in Perth'

ARC Linkage Project - 'Map My Say - An innovative participatory mapping tool for TOD evaluation' (Australia)

iMOVE Intelligent Transport Systems Australia ex Cooperative Research Centre CRC 2019-2021 - 'Managing transport system investment risk: enhancing patronage predictions and adapting strategic asset management and appraisal processes to account for emerging trends and uncertainty' (Australia)

iMOVE Intelligent Transport Systems Australia ex Cooperative Research Centre CRC 2019-2021 - 'Smart Transport Technology Roadmap' (Australia)

Collaborations/Partnerships:

Prof Michael Zyphur (UQ Business School and  Instats instats.org). Through this partnership, UWA students and staff can participate in all instats courses at a 30% discount fees.

University of Leeds, UK - collaboration with Dr Frances Drake (hedonic pricing)

University of Sydney, Australia – collaboration with Prof Corinne Mulley (value uplift associated with transport infrastructure projects) and Prof Stephen Greaves (autonomous vehicles)

University of Oxford, UK - collaboration with Prof Jonathan Gershuny and Dr Teresa Harms (time use analysis in transport; using wearables in travel behaviour research)

University of British Columbia, Canada - collaboration with Dr William Nikolakis (environmental and social strategies for small businesses in forestry and tourism)

University of Burgos, Spain - collaboration with Dr Luis Izquierdo (fuzzy agent-based modelling)

Vrije University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands - collaboration with Prof Hester van Herk (travel and personal values)

Doina Olaru has taught in many different subjects at the UWA Business School in the past 15 years: INMT3331 Network Management, INMT2239 Business Computing, INMT2231 Decision Making, TRLO8536 Transport Research Methods, INMT7461/INMT3309 Multivariate/Applied Data Analysis, INMT7526 Artificial Intelligence Applications for Business.

Currently she is involved in teaching and/or coordinating: MGMT5504 Data Analysis and Decision Making, MGMT5513 Data Driven Decision Making, and BUSN4402 Quantitative Data Analysis.

Over the years, Doina received three teaching awards and more than 10 nominations for excellentce in teaching and supervision.

Urban planning and transport operation
Travel behaviour modelling
Accessibility
Hedonic pricing
Network analysis
Environmental impacts of transport, i.e.life cycle analysis of fuels and exposure to traffic related pollutants
Data mining and artificial intelligence applications

Others: collaborates with numerous colleagues from marketing and management in research areas such as business networks, tourism, information management, multivariate data analysis and discrete choice modelling.