Malikia Cherubala is a senior at Appalachian State University, working with the Institute for Transportation Research and Education at NC State University. An international student from the Democratic Republic of Congo, she is currently earning her bachelor’s degree in Community and Regional Planning, with a minor in Sustainable Development as well as a certificate in Geographic Information Systems.

Cherubala has worked with the ITRE team on a wide variety of public transportation-related projects, including the STRIDE-funded Locating and Costing Congestion for School Buses and Public Transportation. On Phase II of this project, she is focusing on the solutions that local agencies, school districts, and transportation planners can utilize to make transit and school buses reduce their travel times when faced with congested conditions, whether it be route alterations, dedicated lanes, signal prioritizations, or other options.

This project fits in well with her professional interests in transportation network connectivity through the use of public transportation, bicycles and other pedestrian-friendly measures to connect diverse socioeconomic groups of people to the services they need. Cherubala is passionate about enabling access to these needed services by spatially identifying under-serviced communities and informing policy change and development needs in said communities, particularly those housing lower socioeconomic and racially marginalized individuals.

She hopes to evolve in the Urban Planning profession and exercise the power of planning and visioning within transportation, community and neighborhood planning. Growing up in a developing country has helped her realize the importance of master planning and visioning, in ways that can promote economic development using sustainable practices and retrofitting degraded infrastructure.