Mobility & the pandemic – studies from Germany and the U.S.

Team Leader

Dr.-Ing. Christine Eisenmann has headed the Transformation of Automobility group at the Institute of Transport Research of the German Aerospace Center since August 2018. Her research interests include car ownership and use, acceptance of new mobility concepts and technologies (e.g. electromobility, autonomous driving), panel and longitudinal analyses of traffic behavior, and environmental impacts of traffic. Christine Eisenmann studied technical economics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) (2006 to 2012) and worked and received her doctorate at the KIT Institute of Transportation (2012 to 2018). In her doctoral thesis, she was concerned with the microscopic imaging of car usage profiles over longer periods of time. Christine Eisenmann also studied and researched at the University of Iceland, Iceland (2009-2010) and at Virginia Tech, USA (2016).

Team Leader

Claudia Nobis, Dr. rer. nat., M.A. Cultural Studies, has been working at the Institute for Transport Research of the German Aerospace Center since 2000. Since 2013 she has been head of the Mobility Behavior group in the Department of Passenger Transport. Her scientific work focuses on empirical survey and analysis of mobility behavior. The focus is on the observation of different groups of people and the spatial and temporal change of mobility behavior based on panel and longitudinal data. Within the framework of various projects, she has determined user acceptance and the potential of new mobility services and concepts (e.g. car sharing) and examined the effects of demographic change and of information and communication technologies on transport demand. Claudia Nobis has led numerous studies and projects. Examples include two studies conducted as part of the German government’s mobility and fuel strategy (“Influence of demographic developments on mobility and energy consumption” and “Potentials for modal shift in everyday traffic”) and a basic study for the BMVI on the effects of digitization on transport. In the project “Mobility in Germany 2017 (MiD), she was in charge of the DLR work and is the author of the basic reports on mobility in Germany that were produced as part of the project.

Research Fellow

Tim Lomax has been involved in urban mobility research for more than 40 years. He has presented recommendations on congestion strategies and performance measure issues to the U.S. Congress, state legislatures, and a variety of transportation, business, civic and media groups.  He is a three-time graduate of Texas A&M University and the recipient of the Theodore M. Matson Memorial Award for outstanding career contributions in the field of traffic engineering.