Creation: April 2022 for a period of 42 months.
Composition and theme: Research project coordinated by Dianzhuo Zhu, post-doctoral researcher at the Chair, as part of a consortium involving ESSEC, Paris School of Economics (PSE) and BlaBlaCar. Funded by the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME), the project is part of BlaBlaCar's development strategy. Through its ‘BlaBlaModes’ project, BlaBlaCar is seeking to become a multimodal platform (car, coach, train) for long-distance transport. The research teams involved, working in close collaboration with BlaBlaCar's Data Science team, are studying the behaviour of the parties involved in car-sharing (passengers, drivers, platforms) and, beyond that, are seeking to analyse the behaviour of the various segments of the offer, as well as users, in a multimodal system. Following the example of new mobility systems, the aim is both to understand how demand is segmented and the effects of complementarity or substitution between modes of transport, and to consider the models of governance and regulation that need to be implemented. Environmental impact is an important dimension of the analysis, as is economic sustainability.
Within the Chair, a team of four researchers - 2 post-doctoral students and 2 doctoral students - and a data science engineer has been set up to carry out this project.
Work organisation: The dedicated team has been operational since the start of the 2022 academic year.
Close coordination has been established within the consortium.
Research on these themes :
- Analysis of the sensitivity of demand to journey costs
- Analysis of platform design through pricing mechanisms: recommended price, commission, etc.
- Analysis of carpooling meeting points and prospects for the design of intermodal meeting points
- Carbon impact of car sharing
The Team :
Dianzhuo Zhu
Dianzhuo Zhu, is a post-doctoral researcher and the scientific coordinator for the Chair of the research project associated with the BlablaModes project of the French unicorn BlaBlaCar.
Shahmeer Mohsin
Shahmeer Mohsin's doctoral research at the Governance and Regulation Chair focuses on behavioural economics aspects of multimodal mobility. Shahmeer's multidisciplinary background includes studies and professional experience in engineering, computer science, innovation, economics and politics.
Shahmeer has also worked at the International Energy Agency on various aspects of climate-friendly transport, ranging from policy measures to behavioural aspects and market trends. In addition, Shahmeer has worked at KTH in Sweden as a researcher in the field of geoinformatics and data analysis for the sustainable transport sector, at General Electric in the field of energy markets, and at VOI Scooters in Sweden in the field of techno-economic analysis.
His master's degree in energy innovation (M1 from KTH, Sweden and M2 from INP Grenoble, France) gave him a multidisciplinary background in the political, economic and technical aspects of climate change mitigation, the energy sector and the environment. Prior to his Masters, Shahmeer completed an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering at NUST Pakistan, where he specialised in Machine Learning.
Qiming Zhang
Qiming Zhang is a doctoral student in the Governance and Regulation Chair. His research focuses on transport economics and economic policy.
He worked at the Swiss National Bank as a research assistant in Zurich for data collection and visualisation.
Before joining the Chair, he completed his master's studies in economics (economic policy) at the University of Zurich. Prior to his master's degree, he obtained his bachelor's degree in economics from Renmin University of China.
Vladimir Avetian
Vladimir Avetian is a post-doctoral researcher in the Governance and Regulation Chair. His research interests lie in the fields of applied microeconomics, urban economics and political economy.
In his research, he uses large-scale original data, such as user-generated and textual data, to address pressing social issues that are difficult to study with traditional methods.
He received his PhD in Economics from Sciences Po in 2022. Prior to that, he obtained his master's degree from the Paris School of Economics and his bachelor's degree from the Higher School of Economics (Moscow).
José Carlos Romero Moreno
José Carlos Romero Moreno is Senior Data Scientist at Université Paris Dauphine-PSL. Prior to this, he was a research assistant at the University of Málaga in Spain, where he obtained his PhD in Computer Science in 2022.
