M. Elena Renda is a visiting Research Scientist within the JTL Urban Mobility Lab at the MIT Department for Urban Studies and Planning, and a researcher at the Institute of Informatics and Telematics of the National Research Council (IIT - CNR) in Pisa, Italy. She received an MS degree in Computer Science from the University of Pisa, and a Ph.D. Degree in Information Engineering from the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy.  

Elena has worked within the field of Information Retrieval, P2P, VANets, Mesh Networks, and algorithms for Bioinformatics, developing web tools for the bio-community. In the last decade she has grown her interest towards Intelligent Transportation Systems, and she is currently involved in several projects related to Smart Cities and Public Transportation. In particular she is working on defining, studying and exploiting new mobility paradigms (such as mobility sharing) and evaluating their environmental, economic, and social effects. Privacy issues and their implications within the smart mobility realm is one of her most recent research interests.

Elena loves yoga and cooking, and she is very passionate in experimenting new recipes from around the world, but most of all in transferring her passion and her Italian food heritage to her 3 beloved children.

Research Projects: MIT Institute of Data, System, and Society

Research Interests: Social Mobility Sharing