People

NEXTRANS Executive Committee

Srinivas Peeta is a Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue University and the Director of the NEXTRANS Center. He chairs the TRB’s Transportation Network Modeling Committee, and is a member of TRB’s Section on Travel Analysis Methods and the International Federation of Automatic Control’s Technical Committee on Transportation Systems. Peeta also chairs Purdue’s System of Systems Signature Area. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Caltech and The University of Texas at Austin, respectively.

Peeta has received funding of more than $16 million as PI or co-PI from the NSF, USDOT, U.S. Department of Energy, NASA, U.S. Department of Education, FHWA, and INDOT. Peeta’s primary interests are in the area of dynamic traffic/transportation networks, and focus on a broad range of problems in the transportation/infrastructure domains characterized by the need for a systems perspective. He is on the editorial boards of the journals Transportation Research (Part B), Networks and Spatial Economics, and Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems.

Peeta has authored more than 125 technical publications, and has made over 180 invited and/or international conference presentations. His Ph.D. dissertation received the 1994 Best International Dissertation Award from the Institute of Operations Research and Management Science. He received the NSF CAREER award in 1997, and the 2004 Wansik Excellence in Research Award at Purdue University. A paper co-authored by Peeta received the 2007 Exceptional Paper Award from TRB’s Traffic Signal Systems Committee, and another received the Best Paper Award (2008) at the 10th International Conference on the Applications of Advanced Technologies in Transportation in Athens, Greece. He was an invited speaker at the 2008 Indo-American Frontiers of Engineering Symposium of the National Academy of Engineering. He received the Seed for Success Award from Purdue University in 2008.

Ray Benekohal, NEXTRANS Center Co-Director, is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he has been a faculty since 1987. He holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering from Ohio State University. From 1986-1987, Benekohal worked for the consulting firm RKA, Inc.

Benekohal teaches undergraduate and graduate courses and conducts research in traffic flow modeling and simulation, traffic flow theory, intelligent transportation systems, traffic operations, and traffic safety. He has conducted numerous studies for state and federal governments on development, evaluation and analysis of transportation systems. He has written over 120 journal articles, conference papers, and technical reports. He is editor of a book on “Traffic Congestion and Traffic Safety in the 21st Century: Challenges, Innovations, and Opportunities,” published by the American Society of Engineers.

Benekohal is the Director of the Traffic Operations Lab (TOL). He is also the Director of the Annual Illinois Traffic Engineering and Safety Conference. Benekohal is actively involved in Transportation Research Board, ITS Midwest, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Institute of Transportation Engineers. He is the faculty advisor to the Student Chapter of ITE.

Benekohal’s awards and honors include the following: the American Society of Engineers 1993 Arthur M. Wellington Prize; Honorary Professor in Traffic Engineering, Harbin University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, People’s Republic of China, in 1996; and the Illinois Section of Institute of Transportation Engineers’ prestigious Past President’s Award, in 1998.

Rabi Mishalani, NEXTRANS Center Co-Director, is an Associate Professor at Ohio State University (OSU) with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Geodetic Science. Prior to his joining the faculty at OSU in September 1997, he was a research scientist at MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics. His main areas of expertise include the application of probability modeling and statistical methods to the planning and managing of transportation infrastructure systems and the flow operations they support.

Mishalani is or has been principal investigator or co-principle investigator on other research projects funded by national agencies including NSF, US DOT’s RITA, US DOT’s FTA, and NASA. He has been an associate editor of ASCE’s Journal of Infrastructure Systems since January 1998. He won the National Science Foundation CAREER award in September 2001. Rabi Mishalani received his Ph.D. and SM degrees (in CEE and Transportation Systems, respectively) from MIT.

Darcy Bullock is a Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue University, where he has been a faculty member since 1998. He is the Associate Director of the Joint Transportation Research Program of Purdue University and the Indiana Department of Transportation, and Associate Editor of the ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering. He holds Ph.D. and M.S.C.E. degrees in Civil Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Bullock is a Registered Professional Engineer in the States of Louisiana and Indiana. His teaching, research and consulting interests have been in the general area of traffic signal systems, performance measures and probe vehicle travel time estimation. To date he has authored or co-authored over 60 journal publications, and served on a number of panels and committees. Currently, he is an active member of the Transportation Research Board’s A3A18-Traffic Signal Systems and A2H01-Applications of Emerging Technology Committees.

Bullock’s awards and honors include the Journal of Transportation Engineering’s Best Paper Award, (American Society of Civil Engineers, 1992); the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Prize (American Society of Civil Engineers, 2002); the Traffic Signal Systems Committee (AHB25) Best Paper Award (Transportation Research Board, January 2005 and January 2007); the D. Grant Mickle Best Paper Award in the Area of Operations and Maintenance (Transportation Research Board, January 2006); and the Traffic Engineering Council Paper Award (Institute of Transportation Engineers, August 2008).

Imad Al-Qadi is the Founder Professor of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also the Director of the Illinois Center for Transportation and the Director of the Advanced Transportation Research and Engineering Laboratory. Prior to joining UIUC, he served as the Charles E. Via, Jr. Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech and the Group Leader of The Roadway Infrastructure Group. Professor Al-Qadi holds M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from Penn State. His research interests focus primarily on pavements, nondestructive testing, and pavement interlayer system mechanisms, modeling, and fracture mechanics. A Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Al-Qadi has authored/ coauthored more than 300 publications and has delivered more than 300 presentations. He has also delivered several keynote lectures at several international conferences. Professor Al-Qadi received numerous awards including, the Limoges Medal of Merit from France in 2004, the 2002 International Geosynthetic Society Award, the 2001 Dean’s Award for Research Excellence, and the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award in 1994.

Professor Al-Qadi has chaired/co-chaired several international conferences and is a member of more than 20 technical committees and boards. He is the Chair of the TRB Maintenance Section and the ASCE Pavement Committee, among others. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Pavement Engineering, Associate Editor of Research on Nondestructive Evaluation and served as the North American Editor of the Construction and Building Materials Journal.

Mark McCord is a Professor of Civil Engineering and Professor of City and Regional Planning at Ohio State University, where he has been on the faculty since 1983. He teaches and conducts research in transportation systems analysis, planning, and engineering. His primary research interests center on the use of remotely sensed data for transportation applications and on transportation applications of applied multi-attribute decision theory.

McCord serves on the Board of Directors of the Tier II Ohio Transportation Consortium University Transportation Center. He is presently the principal investigator of a USDOT funded multi-university consortium devoted to using advanced technologies to document and model truck crossing times at the Canadian and Mexican borders and of a USDOT funded project seeking to exploit automatically sensed data for improved transit performance. He was the Research Eirector for the USDOT funded multi-university National Consortium for Remote Sensing of Transportation-Flows.

McCord received a Ph.D. in transportation systems/civil engineering from MIT and a masters’ in industrial engineering from Stanford University, and has had visiting appointments or research leaves at the Universite de Paris – Dauphine and at University College-Dublin, Ireland.

John Schneider assumed his current position with the Purdue University in 1994 after spending twenty-seven years with the Dow Chemical Company. As Assistant Vice President of Industry Research, Schneider assists faculty in developing industry contacts and partnerships. His office links Purdue University faculty members with industry and encourages corporate sponsorship of research. He provides a point of contact for companies that are interested in collaborative research programs with Purdue, and can facilitate contact with the departments and/or faculty, which are most appropriate. In addition, he is active in Purdue's economic development initiatives and carries out special projects for the Office of the President and the Office of the Provost.

While with Dow, he had a varied management career with assignments in research, development, marketing, technical services, sales (District Sales Manager for New York area), marketing research, business profit/loss (Dow Brazil) and New Ventures.

Schneider is a member of the following boards/committees: Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic Center for Hazardous Substance Research (University of Michigan) Training and Technology Transfer Advisory Board); Access Technology Across Indiana (ATAIN) Board (President); Lafayette Venture Capital Club Steering Committee; Ecologistics Advisory Board; Indiana Space Grant Consortium Advisory Board; Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at Purdue Advisory Board; Crane Technology Inc. Advisory Board; Indiana Defense and Homeland Security Working Group; the Indiana Region IV Workforce Development Board (Secretary) and Great Lakes Manufacturing Council Board (Vice President).