Flying Taxis Are Nearly Here — What’s Still Grounding Them
As global competitors pull ahead, Georgia Tech experts urge focus on safety and infrastructure for advanced air mobility.
Professor Laurie Garrow’s research focuses on developing and applying advanced data-driven methods to understand air travel behavior and forecast demand. Her work integrates discrete choice modeling, econometrics, and market research techniques to inform aviation planning, scheduling, and revenue management. She is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and the ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize for her contributions to discrete choice modeling and airline decision support systems. Her expertise in aviation has been featured widely in media outlets including CNN, USA Today, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, BBC, and Bloomberg, and she has contributed invited opinion pieces to Barron’s and Scientific American.
Dr. Garrow has published extensively on airline passenger behavior, travel demand modeling, and emerging aviation technologies. She is the author of Discrete Choice Models of Air Travel Demand and has served in several leadership roles within INFORMS and AGIFORS. Prior to joining academia, she spent five years in industry at United Airlines and Mercer Management Consulting. She has advised more than 30 graduate students, including several NSF Graduate Research Fellows, Eisenhower Fellows, and multiple recipients of the Airport Cooperative Research Program Graduate Research Award.
Dr. Garrow’s research applies advanced data analytics and discrete choice modeling to understand air travel behavior, forecast demand, and inform aviation and transportation policy. Her work integrates emerging aviation technologies with insights into passenger preferences to support efficient, responsive, and future-oriented mobility systems.
B.S. North Carolina State University 1995
B.A. North Carolina State University 1995
M.P.Affs. University of Texas at Austin 1997
M.S. University of Texas at Austin 1997
Ph.D. Northwestern University 2004
During her tenure at Georgia Tech, Dr. Garrow has taught a broad range of undergraduate and graduate courses in statistics, travel demand modeling, data analytics, discrete choice methods, revenue management, and airline planning. Her teaching, featured in OR/MS Today, emphasizes assessing learning outcomes and understanding student experiences in flipped classroom environments.
As global competitors pull ahead, Georgia Tech experts urge focus on safety and infrastructure for advanced air mobility.
Transportation engineering graduate student Gabriel Cedraz Diniz was recognized by the Graduate Research Award Program on Public-Sector Aviation Issues for the academic year 2024-25.
Professor Laurie Garrow has launched a new transportation center that focuses on modeling passenger demand for air travel.