Doctoral Student Profiles

Farzana Ahmed is a PhD student in Community and Regional Planning at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on participatory planning, hazard mitigation, and environmental justice, with a particular interest in Gulf Coast communities in Southeast Texas that experience recurring flooding and climate-related risks. She is interested in how participatory approaches and community-generated knowledge can inform more inclusive and equitable planning processes. Farzana previously worked on the Southeast Texas Urban Integrated Field Lab (SETx-UIFL) project, where she contributed to research related to disaster vulnerability and planning practices. Her research explores how local knowledge and lived experiences of risk can inform hazard mitigation planning and policy decisions using participatory methods. She holds a master's degree in urban planning, specializing in Environmental Hazard Management from Texas A&M University, and a bachelor's degree in architecture from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).

Samira’s research interests lie at the intersection of equitable waterscape planning and informal urbanism in the context of South Asia. She is committed to shaping her academic and professional work around the knowledge and lived experiences of marginalized communities, and, in doing so, seeks to explore the tensions between local knowledge production and traditional development approaches and how that shapes discourse. Samira received her MSCRP degree from UT and her Bachelor of Architecture degree from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). She has more than two years of teaching experience in the field of architecture and planning in Bangladesh, leading studios focused on activity-space relationships, urban design, and housing.

Ahyoung specializes in the usage of urban informatics, with a focus on human-centered geospatial analysis and the ethical integration of AI in urban planning. She explores how place shapes human experiences—such as emotion, perception, and cognition—and how, in turn, humans shape the identity of urban places through GeoAI methods. Ahyoung holds a Master’s of Science in Urban Planning and Design and a Bachelor’s of Engineering in Architectural Engineering from the University of Seoul.

Taylor’s research focuses on housing, specifically how local politics, urban regime theory, and decision-making processes affect local homeless service systems. Before joining the CRP program, Taylor was a Program Manager for the City of Austin’s Innovation Office and where she led a team responsible for designing projects and services for people experiencing homelessness in Austin. Previously, Taylor was an IT system design consultant for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and the founding Director of Farmshare Austin. Currently, she serves on the board of the Texas Homeless Network and is an active volunteer with local mutual aid organizations.

Shayna researches the production of socio-technical systems through the prisms of planning history, transportation, infrastructure, and municipal finance. By particularizing the contingencies involved in producing urban space—speculative investments, implementation failures, ideologies, technologies, and real or perceived threats to order—she examines the circumstances, institutional arrangements, and subjectivities that frame the 'public interest' and dictate the terms of collective action. She looks for new ways to imagine the future through this historiographic approach. Shayna is a native of the Washington, DC area, where she earned her Master's in Urban and Regional Planning at Georgetown University.

Do Yun’s research interests lie at the intersection of climate-adaptive and inclusive transportation planning. Her work focuses on travel behaviors within this intersection, including walkability and transit access. She applies geospatial analysis, machine learning algorithms, and urban climate modeling to examine the environmental and equity impacts of transportation systems and to support resilient mobility planning. Prior to coming to UT Austin, Do Yun studied at Seoul National University where she got her Master’s of City and Regional and Environmental Planning.

Luciana's research engages debates on social and environmental justice, water governance, and decolonial planning. She is particularly interested in the tensions between urbanization processes and Indigenous riverine lifeways in urban Amazonia — and in how the knowledges embedded in these everyday practices can expand and challenge conventional planning frameworks. Her work is grounded in community engagement and draws on arts-based methods to support inclusive, place-based planning.

Luciana has a background in law and holds a Master of Public Administration with a concentration in City Planning from the University of Pittsburgh. She previously served as a graduate researcher at the Ford Institute for Human Security and is currently a research assistant at the Extreme Weather Adaptation Lab at UT Austin.

Yueying’s research interests focus on the environmental planning field, especially topics about climate change, ecosystem services, and urban resilience. Before entering the Ph.D. program at UT, she had experience using quantitative data to analyze the relationship between water quality and related factors at the Healthy Urban Stream Interdisciplinary Research Lab at the University of Michigan. She received her Master’s degree at Tongji University.

Anita’s research centers on community-driven flood mitigation, particularly on long term stormwater resilience, equitable policy reform, and climate adaptation. Her work examines how infrastructure can enhance long-term sustainability in flood-prone communities and how policies can shape flood mitigation efforts. Prior to PhD studies at UT, Anita served as a Team Lead at the Texas Water Development Board, managing over $23 million in flood infrastructure projects and developing Texas’ first regional and state flood plans. She holds an MSCRP from UT Austin and a B.S. in Social Work from Salem State University.

Seunggwan’s primary research interest is in travel behavior and urban network systems, specifically how regional connectivity influences transportation outcomes. He examines the relationships between the built environment and mobility patterns to inform sustainable development using various quantitative methods. Seunggwan earned both his Bachelor’s and Master’s in Urban Planning and Design from the University of Seoul in South Korea. He has also participated in many projects focused on urban planning and data- driven strategies for enhancing resilient urban networks.

Gavin is a lifelong Longhorn, having earned his bachelor's degree from the Humanities program and a master's in Community and Regional Planning at the University of Texas at Austin. During his time at UT, Gavin's research interests have spanned various topics, including African American communities, zoning policy, affordable housing initiatives, inner-city neighborhoods, and historic preservation. In his PhD program, Gavin intends to focus his research on the housing experiences of African Americans living in South Korea, comparing them to those in the United States.

David’s research examines how climate vulnerability policy shapes risk distribution, resource allocation, development patterns, and social equity in rapidly urbanizing regions. He focuses on the role of Natural Protected Areas as adaptive infrastructure and analyzes their relationships with surrounding communities in the Global South. Bridging environmental planning and sustainability theory, his work employs mixed methods, including econometric modeling, geospatial analysis, and community-engaged approaches. David holds a Master’s of Sustainability and Regional Studies and a B.A. in Economics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).