Meet the VREF SLOCAT Young Leaders!

The SLOCAT Partnership on Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport and the VREF have now achieved their third round of the SLOCAT-VREF Young Leaders in Sustainable Transport programme. Here are the five selected Young Leaders!

The SLOCAT Partnership and the VREF launched in May 2019 the Young Leaders in Sustainable Transport programme. The programme builds bridges between the transport community and young people and explores new perspectives by creating an interface between knowledge and policy. It will also raise the capacity of young people and provide them new skills in evidence-based policy analysis for sustainable transport.

The 2021 Young Leaders in Sustainable Transport are:

Bianca Ryseck

Bianca Ryseck is a Transport Studies PhD candidate at the University of Cape Town where she is investigating the role of information technologies in enabling access to the hybrid public transport system in Cape Town. She holds an MSc from the London School of Economics in City Design and Social Science where her passion for contextualised-design methodologies for urban planning challenges in emerging cities was born.

She is passionate about the relationship between information technologies, equitable access to mobility, and incentives for behavioural change.

Cabrel Tokam

Cabrel Tokam is a Civil Engineer, pursuing a PhD in Structural and Pavement Engineering at The Pan African University in Nairobi, Kenya. His experiences (mainly acquired from diverse private companies such as STUDI International, and International Organisation such as The World Bank Group – Infrastructure Practice Group) cut across academic research, urban planning, transportation engineering and international development. During his experience, he collaborated effectively with diverse teams adding value to the projects/programmes he worked on (BRT-Dakar, Senegal and Cameroon Transport Sector Support Programme).

He is highly interested about sustainable mobility, climate mitigation and youth leadership. He is now supporting the UN Habitat ROA team as a Civil Engineer Intern in the Global Solutions Division.

Fatoumata Diallo

Fatoumata Diallo is a PhD candidate in comparative political sociology at the Center for International Studies of SciencesPo Paris. Her work investigates the implementation of urban transport projects and the circulation of urban policy models around the world.

Her research is located at the intersection between public policy analysis and urban studies and aims at deepening our understanding of urban governance structures using qualitative methods. She has notably analysed transport reforms in Cape Town, South Africa, Lagos, Nigeria and Greater Paris, France.

Richard Unuigboje

Richard Unuigboje is an Assistant Lecturer, Registered Town Planner, and Ph.D. candidate, University of Lagos. His research interests focus on active travel, non-motorised transport, urban resilience, and waste to wealth practices for the urban poor. He was part of the University of Lagos team that prepared the Lagos Resilience Strategy and the Ajegunle-Ikorodu Community Resilience Action Plan.

Robert Ambunda

Robert is a researcher and academic in the departments of Civil Engineering at Stellenbosch University (South Africa) and University of Namibia (Namibia). His areas of research interest encompass transport modelling, transportation planning and design, Intelligent Transport Systems and MAAS. He has worked with local institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa on data driven road safety and public transport policy and performance targets development.
Robert is passionate about sustainable forms of public transport towards creating greener, safer and less polluted productive cities. He holds a Masters (MEng) and PhD in Civil Engineering from Stellenbosch University.