NEXTRANS Executive Committee
Srinivas Peeta is a professor of civil engineering at Purdue University and Director of the NEXTRANS Center. He chairs TRB’s Transportation Network Modeling Committee (ADB30), 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. degrees in civil engineering from Caltech and The University of Texas at Austin, respectively.
Dr. 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. His 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 board of Transportation Research (Part B), Networks and Spatial Economics, and Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems.
Dr. 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 Dr. Peeta received the 2007 Exceptional Paper Award from TRB’s Traffic Signal Systems Committee; 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. Dr. Peeta also 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 at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where he has been a faculty member since 1987. He holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in civil engineering from The Ohio State University. From 1986-1987, Dr. Benekohal worked for the consulting firm RKA, Inc.
Dr. 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. Dr. Benekohal is the editor of a book, “Traffic Congestion and Traffic Safety in the 21st Century: Challenges, Innovations, and Opportunities,” published by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
Dr. Benekohal is director of the Traffic Operations Lab (TOL). He is also director of the Annual Illinois Traffic Engineering and Safety Conference. He is actively involved with the Transportation Research Board, ITS Midwest, ASCE, and the Institute of Transportation Engineers. He is the faculty advisor for the UIUC Student Chapter of ITE.
Dr. Benekohal’s awards and honors include: the American Society of Civil Engineers Arthur M. Wellington Prize (1993); Honorary Professor in Traffic Engineering, Harbin University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, People’s Republic of China (1996); and the Illinois Section of Institute of Transportation Engineers’ prestigious Past President’s Award (1998).
Rabi Mishalani, NEXTRANS Center Co-Director, is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and geodetic science at The Ohio State University (OSU). Prior to joining the faculty at OSU in September 1997, he was a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Center for Transportation and Logistics. His main areas of expertise include the application of probability modeling and statistical methods to planning and management of transportation infrastructure systems and the flow operations they support.
Dr. Mishalani has been a PI or co-PI on research projects funded by national agencies including NSF, RITA, FTA, and NASA. He has been an associate editor of the American Society of Civil Engineer’s (ASCE) Journal of Infrastructure Systems since January 1998. He won the National Science Foundation CAREER award in September 2001. Dr. Mishalani received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in civil and environmental engineering 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 director of the Joint Transportation Research Program (JTRP) of Purdue University and the Indiana Department of Transportation, and associate editor of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Journal of Transportation Engineering. Dr. Bullock holds M.S.C.E. and Ph.D. degrees in civil engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He is also a registered professional engineer in Louisiana and Indiana.
Dr. Bullock's 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. He is an active member of the Transportation Research Board’s (TRB) A3A18-Traffic Signal Systems and A2H01-Applications of Emerging Technology Committees.
Dr. Bullock’s awards and honors include: the Journal of Transportation Engineering’s Best Paper Award, ASCE (1992); the Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Prize, ASCE (2002); Traffic Signal Systems Committee (AHB25) Best Paper Award, TRB (2005 and 2007); D. Grant Mickle Best Paper Award in the Area of Operations and Maintenance, TRB (2006); and Traffic Engineering Council Paper Award, ITE (2008).
Erol Tutumluer is a professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Paul F. Kent Endowed Faculty Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He holds a B.S. from Bogazici University (1989), 2 M.S. degrees from Duke University (1991) and Georgia Tech (1993), and a Ph.D. from Georgia Tech (1995), all in civil engineering. His area of expertise is in testing and modeling of pavement and railroad track geo-materials, areas in which he has authored and co-authored over 160 technical papers.
Dr. Tutumluer has received numerous awards for his teaching and research, including the Transportation Research Board’s (TRB) Fred Burgraff Award for Excellence in Transportation Research (2000) and TRB’s Geology and Properties of Earth Materials Section Best Paper Award (2009). He serves on a number of committees for TRB and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and currently chairs the ASCE Geo-Institute’s Pavements Committee. He is an editorial board member of the International Journal of Pavement Engineering and ASCE International Journal of Geomechanics, and an associate editor of both the International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology and the ASCE Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering.
Mark McCord is a professor of both civil engineering and of city and regional planning at The Ohio State University (OSU), where he has been a faculty member 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 applications of applied multi-attribute decision theory.
Dr. McCord serves on the Board of Directors of the Tier II Ohio Transportation Consortium University Transportation Center (UTC). He is the principal investigator (PI) 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
Dr. McCord received a M.S. degree in industrial engineering from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in transportation systems/civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has had visiting appointments or research leaves at the Universite de Paris – Dauphine and University College-Dublin, Ireland.
John Schneider assumed his current position with Purdue University in 1994 after spending twenty-seven years with the Dow Chemical Company. As assistant vice president of industry research, Dr. 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 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.
Dr. 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; Indiana Region IV Workforce Development Board (secretary); and Great Lakes Manufacturing Council Board (vice president).
Dr. Schneider received an AB in chemistry from Albion College and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
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