Clarence Woudsma
Academic Director, Future Cities Institute (effective April 1, 2026)
cwoudsma@uwaterloo.ca
Clarence Woudsma is the Academic Director of the Future Cities Institute, effective April 1, and an Associate Professor in the School of Planning in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo. Over three decades of research in transportation, his work has centred on freight transportation and its relationship to cities, spanning freight land use and planning, climate change impacts on surface freight operations, full cost transportation analysis, and the location drivers of logistics facilities. He has a particular interest in trucking and road freight, including last-mile logistics and the policy dimensions of motor carrier transport. His research also extends into broader mobility questions, including cycling infrastructure, climate impacts on active transportation, and urban mobility policy. Clarence's goal is to deepen our understanding of how the movement of goods shapes the urban experience, and to identify approaches that balance competing priorities to create communities that are effective, liveable, and sustainable.
Nadine Ibrahim
Academic Director, MEng Program
nadine.ibrahim@uwaterloo.ca
Nadine Ibrahim is the Academic Director of FCI's MEng Program and an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Waterloo, where she holds the Turkstra Chair in Urban Engineering. Her work sits at the intersection of urban infrastructure, sustainable cities, and engineering education, drawing on environmental engineering, architecture, economics, and governance. Before joining Waterloo, she worked with municipalities across Southern Ontario on infrastructure planning and asset management, and on large-scale international development projects in the Middle East and North Africa for clients including the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility. Nadine also co-organizes World Cities Week annually with FCI, bringing together researchers, practitioners, and students to explore the future of urban communities.
Joyce Kim
Housing Cluster Lead
joyce.kim@uwaterloo.ca
Joyce Kim is FCI's Housing Cluster Lead and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Waterloo. She holds a BASc from the University of Waterloo, a MASc from Thomas Jefferson University, and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on the digital transformation of the built environment to advance low-carbon building design, construction, and operation. She investigates how advanced digital tools, data-driven insights, and artificial intelligence can enhance human-building interactions, optimize system performance, and improve building energy efficiency. Using IoT and machine learning, her work supports intelligent building design and operation strategies that predict occupant comfort and behaviour and contribute to decarbonisation. Her research also explores offsite construction methodologies and life cycle analysis to reduce construction waste, improve construction productivity, and advance circular economy strategies by enhancing the potential for material reuse and deconstruction at a building's end of life.
Jessie Ma
Infrastructure Cluster Lead
jessie.ma@uwaterloo.ca
Jessie Ma is FCI's Infrastructure Cluster Lead and an Assistant Professor and Ontario Research Chair of Sustainable Energy at the University of Waterloo, jointly appointed in the Department of Systems Design Engineering and the School of Environment, Enterprise, and Development. She leads the Ma Energy Research Lab, where her research explores using flexible and distributed energy resources to meet net-zero goals through deep electrification. Before joining Waterloo, Dr. Ma spent two decades in the Ontario electricity sector, including over a decade at Hydro One and a research fellowship at the Centre for Urban Energy at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Jeff Casello
Mobility Cluster Lead
jcasello@uwaterloo.ca
Jeff Casello is FCI's Mobility Cluster Lead and a Professor jointly appointed in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo. He is also the lead researcher of the Waterloo Public Transportation Initiative, a research group providing expertise in urban transportation planning and engineering. His research focuses on quantitative models of transportation system performance, with particular interest in transit and non-motorized modes and the impacts of transportation investments on land use patterns. Professor Casello is the lead author, with Vukan R. Vuchic, of Transit Planning for the Institute of Transportation Engineers' Transportation Planning Handbook, and has worked with transit agencies across Canada, the United States, and internationally.
David Del Rey Fernández
Modelling Cluster Lead
ddelreyfernandez@uwaterloo.ca
David Del Rey Fernández is FCI's Modelling Cluster Lead and an Associate Professor and Pratt & Whitney Canada Chair in Industrial Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo. Before joining Waterloo, he was a postdoctoral researcher and then a research scientist at NASA Langley Research Center and the National Institute of Aerospace. His research centres on developing efficient and robust numerical algorithms for solving partial differential equations on high-performance computing systems, with a focus on numerical methods, mesh adaptation, and machine learning for automation and efficiency. At FCI, his work includes developing AI-driven digital twin systems for urban infrastructure networks, creating simulation tools that support data-driven municipal decision-making on infrastructure planning and predictive maintenance.