
Constantine E. Kontokosta
Lab Director and Associate Professor of Urban Science and Planning

Constantine E. Kontokosta
Constantine E. Kontokosta, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Urban Science and Planning and Director of the Civic Analytics Program at the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University (NYU). He also directs the Urban Intelligence Lab and holds faculty appointments at the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) and the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Previously, he served on the founding NYU CUSP leadership team and designed and led one of the first graduate programs in urban science and informatics. His work has been published in PNAS, Nature Communications, and Nature Energy, among others, and he is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the IBM Faculty award, and best paper awards from the Journal of the American Planning Association and the Bloomberg Data for Good conference. He holds a Ph.D., M.Phil., and M.S. from Columbia University, where he received the HUD Doctoral Dissertation Award and the Lincoln Institute’s C. Lowell Harriss Fellowship, a M.S. from New York University, and a B.S.E. from the University of Pennsylvania.
- Email:ckontokosta@nyu.edu

Bartosz Bończak
Research Scientist and Lab Manager

Bartosz Bończak
Bartosz is a Research Scientist and Lab Manager in the Urban Intelligence Lab.
He conducts innovative applied research, working with cities to take on critical challenges of urban living. Bartosz uses data science, machine learning and computational tools to derive insights from the wide array of data both publicly available and proprietary data collected by various partnering city agencies and organizations. His projects span many different domains and topics ranging from understanding building energy performance for data-driven policies to drive climate action, identifying urban mobility patterns and their interdependence with the physical infrastructure.
Bartosz received M.S. in Urban Informatics from CUSP (2015) and completed a B.S. (2009) and a M.S. (2011) in Geography with a focus on tourism from University of Lodz in his home country of Poland. Prior to joining Marron Institute he was a Research Scientist at NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress.
- Email:bartosz.bonczak@nyu.edu

Boyeong Hong
Postdoctoral Associate

Boyeong Hong
Boyeong Hong is a Postdoctoral Associate of Dr. Constantine Kontokosta’s Civic Analytics Program at the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management. Her research interests focus on how to apply urban informatics to real world problems in urban planning and operations. Boyeong’s current work deals with predictive city analytics using Big Data and Machine Learning techniques to deliver better city services allocation in partnership with various city agencies. Additionally, she is working on the human mobility project associated with the disaster management and the urban resilience planning. Boyeong is currently an affiliated adjunct faculty at Columbia University, the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, teaching a course entitled Exploring Urban Data with Machine Learning.
Boyeong earned a Ph.D. in Civil and Urban Engineering, majoring in Urban Informatics from New York University, and she holds a M.S. in Applied Urban Science and Informatics from NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP). Previously, she worked at the Pratt Center for Community Development translating geospatial data into problem solving insight through GIS mapping and analysis. Prior to coming to the United States, She participated in various research projects related to urban planning and data analytics in Seoul, South Korea. She holds a B.Arch from Yonsei University and a Master of City Planning degree from Seoul National University.
- Email:boyeong.hong@nyu.edu

Yuan Zhao
Civic Analytics Research Fellow

Yuan Zhao
Yuan Zhao is a doctoral student at NYU School of Global Public Health. She is interested in using advanced statistical methods and machine learning to understand how social determinants are causing health disparities, especially in the domains of infectious disease transmission and health utilization. Originally from China, she holds a BS in biology from Peking University, and two master degrees of epidemiology and biostatistics. Her previous research mainly focused on causal inference using targeted maximum likelihood estimation (TMLE) framework and machine learning to predict hospital admission. She loves New York City very much and hopes to learn spatial analysis and apply knowledge she learned previously at Marron Institute to help build healthier and fairer cities.
- Email:yuan.zhao@nyu.edu

Zenn Wong
Civic Analytics Research Fellow

Zenn Wong
Zenn Wong is a Civic Analytics Fellow at NYU Marron and a postgraduate student at the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP). Her research interests are focused on using data-driven approaches to inform urban policy-making and urban planning. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Geography with a Social Data Science concentration from University College London, offered by the UCL Q-Step Centre, in which she received state-of-the art training in social data science, through courses in quantitative research methods, data analysis and visualization. Her cartography and data visualization work have been featured on Kontinentalist, a data visualization and storytelling studio and website based in Singapore, as well as at University College London’s open fairs. With prior experience in data analytics, urban consulting and urban policy-making, she hopes to help build equitable and sustainable urban communities through her work at NYU Marron.
- Email:zsw6268@nyu.edu

Yuan Lai
Affiliated Scholar

Yuan Lai
Yuan Lai is an Assistant Professor in Urban Science and Planning at Tsinghua University, Department of Urban Planning. Yuan's expertise lies at the intersection of urban information, applied data science, and urban systems. He is interested in the future connection between computer science and urban planning to address the socio-technical complexities of cities.
Before Tsinghua, Yuan was a Lecturer in Urban Science and Planning at MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, as well as a research affiliate at NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management and NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP). His work involves applied analytics and machine learning using large volume and variety of data related to the urban environment, population health, social media, sensing network, and economic transactions. He also practiced urban design at Safdie Architects on large-scale mixed-use development projects worldwide. Yuan holds a Ph.D. in urban systems and informatics from NYU, a M.S. in applied urban science and informatics from NYU CUSP, as well as a Master of urban planning and a Bachelor of landscape architecture.
- Email:yuan.lai@nyu.edu