GWU Transportation Lab

In high school, I interned at GWU's transportation research lab studying crowd dynamics and pedestrian safety — specifically, how to design buildings and spaces that reduce crowd crushing and enable smooth evacuations.

The Social Force Model

Pedestrians experience forces: attraction toward their destination, repulsion from walls, repulsion from other people. Model these correctly and you can simulate how crowds behave in emergencies.

Counterintuitive findings: adding a center bar to double doors actually improves flow. Putting classroom desks against the wall (rather than the center) makes evacuations faster. Small design decisions save lives.

Simulation → Physical validation

First I simulated thousands of agents in a virtual environment. Then I built physical robots with LIDAR sensors and servo motors that replicated pedestrian behavior in the real world. The physical robots matched the simulation. The model held.

Tech: Arduino (C++), LIDAR, servo motors, agent-based simulation.