Rachael Thompson Panik, Ph.D., AICP

Rachael Thompson Panik, AICP, PhD, (she/her)  is a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Rachael holds degrees in transportation engineering and planning from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (BS), Clemson University (MCRP) and Georgia Tech (PhD). Before pursuing her Ph.D., she worked as a transportation planning consultant and planned safe infrastructure for bicyclists and pedestrians across the southeast. Rachael leverages her diverse training and education towards an interdisciplinary program of research. She is a quantitative researcher who studies “upstream” transportation safety  – causes of traffic crashes that do not relate to crashes themselves, but rather decision-making factors that preclude effective planning of safe transportation systems. Recent focus areas include exploring and eliminating barriers to implementing safe infrastructure, studying attitudes towards safety among decision-makers, and estimating biking and walking volumes towards risk-based project prioritization.

Rachael has been a part of national-level planning and transportation leadership for many years. She served as the Chair of APA’s Student Representatives Council (SRC) and Emerging Planner Board Member from 2017-2019, and as past-chair of the SRC from 2019-2021. She has also served on APA’s Education Committee (2021–2022) and Nominations Committee (2023–2024). Currently, she is a member of the Transportation Research Board’s Committee on Bicycle Transportation (2024 – present) and a research coordinator for the Subcommittee on Bicycle and Pedestrian Data (2024 – present).