Honors CS @ University of Houston · Houston, TX
Vincent Wren
Urban Planning · GIS & Spatial Analysis · Computer Science
I’m an honors student at the University of Houston working toward a career in urban planning, backed by a computer science degree. My current research is in transportation safety: modeling crash risk from street design, and building the public tools that show how cities decide which streets are dangerous.
Selected work
Spatial analysis & GIS projects
Vision Zero Houston
Pharis Fellowship research asking whether Houston knows where its dangerous streets are.
Equitable Bike Share Station Siting
Modeling where a future Houston bike share should place stations to balance ridership and equity.
The Road to Campus
A survey-based data portrait exploring whether commute burden shapes civic engagement among UH undergraduates.
Downtown Houston Land Use Analysis
Quantifying how much of downtown’s land is given to vehicles versus people.
Houston Transit Equity & Frequency Study
Mapping METRO’s high-frequency network against population to find gaps in access to frequent transit.
Houston Equity of Places
Correlating amenity density with demographics to surface inequities in access.
A 15-Minute Neighborhood: Diemen-Zuid
A walkability analysis of my old Amsterdam neighborhood, mapping what is reachable on foot in 5, 10, and 15 minutes.
Midtown Houston Complete Streets Visualization
A 3D procedural model exploring how the Louisiana & Smith corridor could be retrofitted for multimodal travel.
Campus Bike Parking Utilization Field Survey
A field survey of 74 campus bike racks revealing where capacity is failing.
Istanbul Seismic Vulnerability Index
A 3D index combining earthquake hazard and population exposure to rank Istanbul’s districts by risk.
Photographic Footprint of the Netherlands
A heatmap of 13,000 geotagged photos from my semester abroad, layered with GPX tracks from two long-distance bike tours.
Perseverance Rover Path, Jezero Crater
A cartographic map tracing NASA’s Perseverance rover path across Jezero Crater on Mars.
Other projects
No Higher No Wider I-10
Maintaining an advocacy website for a community effort around the I-10 freeway.
Miles to Victory
A data-science project on how travel affects MLB team performance.
Food Oasis
A first-place hackathon web app helping people in food deserts find access to food.
Hour Tracking Web App
A real-time tool that automates employee hour tracking.
About
A little background
I started writing software in middle school and competed in the FIRST Robotics Competition in high school, where I picked up Java and object-oriented programming. Today I’m an honors computer science student at the University of Houston, with minors in Architecture and Data & Society, and I recently spent a semester studying at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
My focus has grown toward transportation safety and urban planning: modeling crash risk from street design, mapping who bears the harm, and studying how cities decide which streets are dangerous. I plan to pursue urban planning in graduate school and beyond.
When I’m not working, you can usually find me riding my bike, reading, or playing cello.
Skills
GIS & spatial analysis
- ArcGIS Pro
- ArcGIS CityEngine
- QGIS
- ArcGIS Online
- Field Maps
- Network Analyst
- GeoAI
- Kepler.gl
- Georeferencing
Statistics & machine learning
- Negative binomial regression
- Machine learning
- Computer vision (SegFormer, Faster R-CNN)
- Causal DAGs
- Survey design & distribution
- Data cleaning
- Correlation analysis
Data sources
- TxDOT CRIS
- GTFS
- OpenStreetMap
- Census / ACS data
Programming
- Python
- PyTorch
- JavaScript
- Java
- C++
- Git / GitHub
Visualization & cartography
- Data portraits
- Cartographic design
- Isotype charts
- 3D visualization
Collaboration & leadership
- Team leadership
- Mentoring & tutoring
- Public storytelling
- Community advocacy
- Cross-disciplinary teamwork
- Human-centered design
Languages
- English (native)
- Dutch (intermediate)
Experience
Where I’ve worked
- Pharis Fellow University of Houston Honors College & HPE Data Science InstituteMay 2026 – Present
- Built Vision Zero Houston, a public citywide traffic-safety dashboard, in partnership with the office of Council Member Joseph Panzarella (District C): 421,000+ state crash records across 66,900 street segments, explorable by street, district, neighborhood, and travel mode.
- Developed a proactive street-design risk model (negative binomial regression with computer-vision features from street imagery) that captured 51% of held-out severe crashes vs 46% for the City’s High Injury Network at matched mileage.
- Identified roughly 300 miles of high-risk streets missing from the City’s official network; sole-authored a paper submitted to the Transportation Research Board (TRB) 2027 Annual Meeting.
- Project Invent Manager Lazarus EnergyJul 2025 – May 2026
- Led 36 students through a year-long human-centered design invention program.
- Mentored teams through the full engineering design process, from research to pitch.
- IT Intern Lazarus EnergyOct 2023 – Jan 2025
- Developed a real-time data management web app to improve scheduling efficiency.
- Automated employee hour tracking using the Google Sheets API.
- TechConnect Intern City of HoustonJun 2024 – Aug 2024
- Facilitated STEM activities for youth to promote digital equity in under-resourced areas.
- Collaborated with professionals at TechConnect Fairs; earned Apple Teacher certification.
Publications
Research
-
Quantifying What Houston’s High Injury Network Misses with a Validated Design-Risk Model
Leadership & extracurricular
What I’m involved in
-
Alumni Ambassador · Featured National Storyteller
CEA CAPA
Published a featured narrative on Dutch cycling infrastructure and study abroad for The Forum Annual Conference.
Read “Transformation” ↗Feb 2026
-
Website Manager
No Higher No Wider I-10
Build and maintain the advocacy website for a community effort opposing the I-10 freeway expansion in Houston.
Feb 2024 – Present
-
Events Coordinator Intern
CodeCoogs
Managed room bookings and scheduling for the university’s competitive programming organization.
Sep 2024 – Dec 2024
-
GearShifter Advocate & Volunteer
BikeHouston
Advocate for safer cycling infrastructure across Houston; helped build a data-visualization dashboard mapping cycling infrastructure and crashes.
Jan 2024 – Present
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Tutor
CougarCS
Tutored students in introductory Python and C++ courses at the University of Houston.
Aug 2023 – Aug 2024
-
Captain & Programming Lead
FIRST Robotics Competition · Team 5892 Energy HEROs
Led the team to the State competition and won the FRC Autonomous Award; wrote the Java code controlling the robot.
Oct 2021 – May 2023
-
Omega Team Lead
NASA High School Aerospace Scholars
Led an eight-person team designing a lunar south-pole habitat as part of an Artemis-focused program.
Oct 2021 – Feb 2022