Dr. Kelly Clifton

Biography

Kelly J. Clifton is an internationally recognized expert in transportation land use interactions, travel behavior, and pedestrian modeling, with a focus on equity in transportation policy. He has a distinguished career working to elevate public impact research partnerships with public agencies and community groups. Previously, he held a professorship at Portland State University's Civil and Environmental Engineering department and served as an affiliate of the Urban Studies and Planning Program. His academic contributions include a role as interim Associate Vice President for Research and Associate Dean for Research at Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science. With faculty positions at the University of Maryland and University of Iowa, Clifton holds a PhD in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Texas at Austin, an MS in Planning from the University of Arizona, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from West Virginia University. His research efforts include ongoing projects examining changes in grocery shopping behaviors during the pandemic and developing the Model Pedestrian Demand (MoPeD), a forecasting tool for pedestrian behaviors. Clifton is engaged in international collaborations, having served as a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Technical University of Munich until 2020. He is the inaugural Chair of the World Symposium on Transport and Land Use Research and was appointed as a Fulbright Scholar in Portugal in 2016.

Research Interests