My time at TRB CATE 2024

Last month, I attended the TRB 2024 Conference on Advancing Transportation Equity (TRB CATE 2024). The conference, which was held in Baltimore, was probably the most enjoyable conference that I have attended thus far (though I have not attended that many), for the following reasons mostly related to how good it was for networking. First, the number of attendees, which was around 500, was enough for almost all of the attendees to meet new people & network effectively; the presence of fewer attendees might lead to a situation where a large percentage of the attendees know each other, leading to other attendees feeling left out, while the presence of more attendees might lead to most attendees feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of meeting attendees unknown to them and therefore discouraged to do much other than spend time with known attendees (as often happens in the TRB Annual Meetings). Second, the conference was more focused on equity issues in transportation, so attendees were very passionate about this issue, and this led to more positive vibes & more fruitful discussions (in contrast to something like the TRB Annual Meeting, where the breadth of topics means that it is unlikely for someone working on pavement engineering to have much in common with someone working on public transit network redesigns). Third, conference organizers explicitly encouraged (at multiple points during the conference) attendees to network, and the schedule (especially including the presence of multiple poster sessions structured as receptions/mixers) included a lot of time for networking instead of being packed from start to finish with highly structured sessions.

I am especially grateful to my current employer for sponsoring my attendance given that I presented a poster about work from my previous job (and, interestingly enough, this was personally my first time presenting a poster in any professional setting). It reflects well on my current employer's willingness to take chances with their employees and supporting employees' presence at such conferences so that the employer's name is more publicized and the employee gets the professional development benefits of learning & networking. Additionally, I got to meet several of my colleagues in person, which felt even better given that most of us work remotely and many of them live in different parts of the US. As this conference happened during the second week of my current job, it really felt like an auspicious way to start this job.

My time at the TRB 2024 Annual Meeting

Last month, I attended the TRB 2024 Annual Meeting. The conference, which was held in DC, was a lot of fun. The graduate student researcher working with me was able to present our work as a poster. Additionally, although I didn't meet as many people whom I had not met before, this was a good opportunity for me to deepen connections with people with whom I had connected more briefly in past conferences in person or remotely. In particular, these included people working like me at the intersection of transportation & disability as well as people working in the autonomous vehicle industry. Strengthening connections with people in the former group was especially important to me because of the relevance of my work, how few of us there are in the US, and being able to feel like I am part of a group of like-minded academic researchers (given that I lead so much of my work essentially alone in the context of academic researchers). Strengthening connections with people in the latter group was important to me because of recent turbulence in the space of autonomous vehicles and the need for consistent pushes for inclusion of people with disabilities as users of such vehicles.

My Time at the 2023 TRB Annual Meeting

Last month, I attended the 2023 TRB Annual Meeting. I meant to write this post immediately afterwards, but I became busy with work and with preparing for international travel which I started soon after that and finished just yesterday. Thus, for the first time in the history of this blog, there was a month with no new post. I'll try my best going forward to continue posting at least once each month, but sometimes, these issues can come up.

The conference, which was held in DC, was a lot of fun. The graduate student researcher working with me was able to present our work as a poster. Additionally, it was my first experience attending an external conference (i.e. one not hosted by UC Davis) since changing fields to get into transportation policy research, so it was an excellent opportunity for professional networking. Because I had previously attended the APS March Meeting for 3 years (2017-2019), I was prepared for a conference of a similar size and scope; in particular, I intentionally avoided overloading my schedule with presentation sessions, made time to take breaks, and made time to meet people informally. Additionally, as transportation is a much more policy-oriented field than physics and is not confined to academia, I made sure to attend TRB committee meetings, different organizations' receptions in the evenings, and other events technically outside of the conference itself. I certainly professionally got what I wanted out of it, and I look forward to attending again in the future.

Book Review: "All the President's Men" by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward

I recently got to read All the President's Men by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward; although I had seen the movie many years ago, I hadn't gotten the opportunity to read the book until now, and I figured that with the current political situation in the US which so many are calling "Nixonian", it would be good to revisit one of the definitive works about a pivotal political scandal in that era. It's a documentation, from the perspective of the Washington Post reporters (the authors of the book), of the events and investigative journalism starting from the reports of the Watergate Hotel burglary and ensuing arrests all the way to the implication of President Richard Nixon and his top aides in engaging in illegal dirty campaign tactics to harm political enemies and subsequent illegal coverup tactics. It's a moderately long book, yet the smooth writing and structure of the details keep the narrative moving quickly. Although it has been a while, from what I remember, the movie focuses more on Bob Woodward's meetings with Deep Throat (the deep background informant who worked for the government), so it was nice for me to see the fuller picture of events from many other angles, showing that the meetings with Deep Throat, while important, were not necessarily the primary focus of any reporting events.

From the standpoint of this being a documentation of historical events, more than anything else, I was fascinated to see the (usually clever, sometimes questionable) extent to which reporters like Woodward and Bernstein would cajole agreements to meet and then share information on the phone, in person, or in writing with various people; it was like a miniature course in human psychology in the framework of various competing institutions with different power structures, and this was evident not just in the conduct of the interview subjects but also in Woodward and Bernstein themselves. That said, there were a few instances were their conduct went beyond the point of being questionable, becoming sleazy or even straddling the line of legality, and while these instances were discussed, they weren't given the same gravity as the corrupt behavior of government officials that they were uncovering; from their perspective, it makes sense as they would of course cast themselves in their own story as sympathetic protagonist reporters going up against a corrupt and vile group of people in a powerful institutions, but I would have liked to see more of this (though maybe other accounts from this era from other reporters would go further in depth). Overall, I really enjoyed reading this, and would recommend this to anyone interested in the political situation then or now. Follow the jump to see a few more brief thoughts about this book in the context of the current political situation in the US.

Movie Review: Disturbia

To make up for that ridiculously long previous post, this one will be ridiculously short.
I watched "Disturbia" on TNT at someone's house tonight.
Suffice it to say, it freaked me out, but then again, all horror movies generally do. Of course, I'm usually pretty easily scared by anything in a movie anyway.
That's all.