Mollie Cohen D'Agostino

Picture of Mollie D'agostino

Executive Director, MoSAIC, Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis
Senior Policy Analyst

Mollie Cohen D’Agostino is a founding and Executive Director of the Mobility Science, Automation, and Inclusion Center (MoSAIC) at the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS-Davis), established in 2023. MoSAIC is a unique partnership with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, designed to expand UC Davis’ technical and policy expertise on connected and automated vehicles (CAVs), artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and related public policy strategies. 

Mollie oversees all MoSAIC personnel which includes over a dozen affiliated faculty, several law student fellows, several postdoctoral researchers, several graduate student researchers. MoSAIC also leverages a team of ~25 administration, communications and development staff that are shared among the ITS-Davis Centers. Mollie also oversees MoSAIC's fiscal and institutional solvency, seeking out support from public research awards, contracts, and private gifts. Currently, sponsored projects include ~$2.5 million in partnership with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), The California Department of Transportaiton (Caltrans), the US Department of Transportation - Federal Highway Administration, the State of California's University of California Institute of Transportation Studies Fund, Waymo, and the University of San Francisco. Over her time at UC Davis, Mollie has also had research partnerships with SACOG, SANDAG, LA Metro, LADOT, among others. 

Mollie holds a Master’s in Public Policy from UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and a B.A. in Political Science and Environmental Studies from the University of Michigan. These credentials, combined with her entrepreneurial spirit, have enabled her to take on policy leadership roles across UC Davis and the broader UC system. In 2017, she founded the 3 Revolutions Policy Initiative, which informed the widely read book 3 Revolutions: Steering Automated, Shared, and Electric Vehicles to a Better Future and an enduring ITS-Davis research program.  

She also recently launched the ITS-Davis Policy Collaborative, reframing the former Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy into a more inclusive and impactful internal organization to amplify the reach of ITS-Davis research. Prior to this, Mollie served as Policy Lead for emerging technology, public transit, and shared mobility for the UC Institute of Transportation Studies systemwide, guiding research efforts across UC Davis, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC Irvine. In this role she routinely met with California state legislative and regulatory stakeholders to share findings from the research, and ensure researchers are aware of policy developments. 

Mollie is also a voting member of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Standing Committee on Developments and Advancements in Transportation Technology Law. She brings over 15 years of experience in policy and legal scholarship focused on emerging transportation technologies. Her research spans automated vehicle policy, mobility data governance, equitable congestion pricing, and transit payment innovations. She is committed to bridging academic research with policymaking by producing briefs, publications, and convenings that engage decision-makers and practitioners.

Her dedication to public service began before UC Davis, through roles with the Alameda County Transportation Commission, the City of Oakland (City Council and Housing & Community Development Department), and California Environmental Voters (formerly the California League of Conservation Voters), where she helped advance the landmark climate bill AB 32. 

In her free time, Mollie is an enthusiastic public transit rider and advocate. Today, in addition to her research leadership, Mollie contributes locally as a member of the Yolo County Transportation District Citizen Advisory Committee and has served on multiple Northern California climate planning committees.

Relevant Research and Publications

Automated Vehicle Policy analysis: These research projects are part of a larger strategic effort at UC Davis to proactively address the pressing policy issues for the AuV sector, and to produce research that is timely, relevant and valuable, reflecting key policy and regulatory issues facing the AV industry including emissions, equity, data/ accountability, connectivity, etc. Many of these projects were funded in part by the State of California, by way of annual funding to the UC Institute of Transportation studies (UC ITS). The California Strategic Growth Commission was also an additional funding partner associated with the California Automated Vehicle strategies paper.

  • D’Agostino, M.C.; Michael, C.E; Ramos, M. “A Blueprint for Improving Automated Driving System Safety” UC Institute of Transportation Studies. July 2024 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/46d6d86x
  • D'Agostino, M.C.; Michael, C.E; Venkataram, P. “Experiences with Autonomous Vehicle in U.S. Cities” UC Institute of Transportation Studies May 2024. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5rk148nr
  • Jaller, M., Otero-Palencia, C., & D’Agostino, M. (2022). Jobs and Automated Freight Transportation: How Automation Affects the Freight Industry and What to Do About It. UC Davis: National Center for Sustainable Transportation. http://dx.doi.org/10.7922/G2SX6BHW Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0vk5t0rw
  • D’Agostino M.and Francisco, S Shaheen, and D. Sperling, “California automated vehicle policystrategies,” in UC Davis: Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6s59c5b7.
  • M. D’Agostino, K. Fleming, K. White, M. Scribner, and B. Feigenbaum, “Policy and regulation of automated vehicles: Spotlight on u.s. federal and states,” in Road Vehicle Automation 8, G. Meyer and S. Beiker, Eds., Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022, pp. 22–39.

Mobility Data Sharing Policy Analysis: These projects reflect a series of collaborations with UCLA and other colleagues to respond to urgent interest from public sector stakeholders in California about how best to pursue data sharing agreements with shared mobility providers. The state of California, through UC ITS sponsored the “Sharing Mobility Data” paper, and the UC Davis Policy Institute sponsored the “Mobility Data sharing…” project.  

  • D’Agostino M. C Pellaton and A Brown, “Mobility data sharing: Challenges and policy recommendations,”in UC Davis: Policy Institute for Energy, Environment, and the Economy, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4gw8g9ms.
  • Matute, J., D'Agostino, M.C, & Brown, A. (2020). Sharing Mobility Data for Planning and Policy Research. UC Office of the President: University of California Institute of Transportation Studies. http://dx.doi.org/10.7922/G2ZG6QHH Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/88p873g4

Road and Congestion Pricing Policy Analysis: This series of projects reflect research that shows how congestion pricing can be an equitable policy strategy, and how different cities are considering congestion-related road pricing policies, cataloguing cities who have studied but not yet implemented congestion pricing. These were also sponsored by the state of California, by way of UC ITS.

  • Colner, J. P, & Cohen D’Agostino, M. (2023). How Seven Cities Are Exploring Congestion Pricing Strategies. UC Office of the President: University of California Institute of Transportation Studies. http://dx.doi.org/10.7922/G2Z60MDW Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4q87j713
  • Cohen D’Agostino, M., Pellaton, P., & White, B. (2020). Equitable Congestion Pricing. UC Office of the President: University of California Institute of Transportation Studies. http://dx.doi.org/10.7922/G2RF5S92 Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/17h3k4db

Shared mobility, Micromobility, Climate & Transportation Policy Analysis: These projects reflect our team’s effort to address gaps in the literature on shared mobility, and transportation decarbonization topics. We investigated federal and state transportation decarbonization efforts, as well as completing an analysis of early effort to tax ridehailing service providers, referred to in California statute as Transportation Network Companies (TNCs), such as Uber and Lyft. This research recognized the possible pathways for TNC impacts, which could improve transportation sustainability if they facilitated more pooled travel and public transit use. We also studied micromobility policies using ten case study cities. These projects were sponsored by the UC Davis Policy Institute, the National Center for Sustainable Transportation, and the Pacific Southwest Regional University Transportation Center (UTC) made possible by the US Department of Transportation. 

 

Education and Degree(s)
  • Masters in Public Policy (M.P.P.) , UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy
  • Bachelors of Arts (B.A) Political Science & Program in the Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor