Featured Center: SafeTREC
Name: Matthew Raifman
- What’s your hometown?
“Charm City” Baltimore, Maryland
- What is your role at ITS, describe your job in four words, and how long have you been here?
I’m a senior researcher at Safe Transportation Research & Education Center (SafeTREC). I make California’s roads safer. I’ve been there for just over one year.
- What is your favorite thing about working at ITS?
I love that our work is intellectually interesting and pushes the envelope of transport innovation while also being extremely relevant to policy discussions underway at the city, state, and national level.
- Where’s your happy place, favorite bay area location?
No question it is Point Reyes National Seashore. When I’m not working or responding to calls for “dada” from my young kids, you can find me out at Point Reyes hiking and documenting wildlife.
- When you aren’t cheering the Bears on, who do you root for/what’s your alma mater?
The Jumbos (Tufts University).
- What is on the top of your travel experience/destination list?
Patagonia to the South and Lofoten to the North, or North Cascades National Park, Washington a little closer to home.
- What’s the latest book you read/latest show you binged/movie you watched/podcast you listened to? (Choose one or two or more)
Book: Group F.64 by Mary Street Alinder about perhaps most famous movement in the history of photography
Show: Murderbot at AppleTV
Podcast: Every single Planet Money on NPR (does that count?)
- What is your favorite food?
A good spicey turkey chili with all the toppings
- If you could become a mode of transportation, what would you be?
A drone with collision avoidance tech. Can’t beat the view flying with the birds.
- If you could meet anyone in the world, dead, alive, or fictional, who would it be?
Ansel Adams, John Muir, and Theodore Roosevelt for a camping trip in Yosemite.
- What’s your most treasured possession?
My camera
- What is a fun fact about you?
While traveling in Italy by train, I once accidentally pulled the stop lever while removing my bag from an overhead compartment and caused a train to emergency stop outside of Venice. I did not pay a five-pound penalty for improper use.