Member Profile: Anuj Sharma

Dr. Anuj Sharma is an associate professor in the Civil Construction and Environmental Engineering Department at Iowa State University. He is the co-director of REACTOR (Realtime Analytics of Transportation Data) lab.  In these positions, he teaches transportation engineering courses to undergraduate and graduate civil engineering students, conducts research in the transportation operations area, and participates in numerous professional organizations.  He is also Editor in chief of Springer-Nature’s Journal of Big Data Analytics in Transportation.

His research uses big data-driven discoveries to help make better short term (usually automated control) and long term (policy) decisions. The High-Performance Cluster (HPC) assembled for the REACTOR lab is able to ingest multiple streams of real-time data from multiple sources. REACTOR-HPC and a memorandum of understanding with Iowa DOT, has placed Iowa State University among one of the very few facilities in the US transportation arena using big data analytics in the field of transportation.

Member Profile: Ram Pendyala

Ram Pendyala is a professor of transportation systems in, and Associate Director of, the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona. He is also a Senior Sustainability Scientist, closely affiliated with the ASU Global Institute of Sustainability, and a Barrett Honors Faculty affiliated with Barrett, The Honors College.  Dr. Pendyala served on the faculty at Arizona State University during 2006-2014 and rejoined the institution effective August 2016. Dr. Pendyala served as the Frederick R. Dickerson Chair Professor of Transportation Systems in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology from August 2014 to July 2016. Prior to 2006, Dr. Pendyala served on the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida for 12 years.  He is an expert in multimodal transportation systems modeling, activity-based travel behavior analysis, and land use and activity-travel demand forecasting.  He has served in a number of professional leadership positions, including: President of the Association of Transportation Professionals of Indian Origin (2011); Chair of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Committee on Traveler Behavior and Values (2003-2009); Chair of the TRB Section on Travel Analysis Methods (2009-2015); Chair of the TRB Planning and Environment Group (2015-2018); Chair of the International Association for Travel Behaviour Research (2010-2012); and Associate Editor of Transportation Research Part D.  He has his PhD and Master’s degrees from the University of California at Davis, and his undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras.

Member Profile: Kumares Sinha

ATPIO Founding President Dr. Kumares C. Sinha is no stranger to the community of transportation professionals around the world. Dr. Sinha is Edgar B. & Hedwig M. Olson Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue University. He also serves as a Guest Lockheed Martin Professor of Engineering and Computer Science in University of Central Florida and an Eminent Scholar in Residence at Texas A&M University. He has been active in teaching, research and practice in transportation systems planning and engineering for about five decades. He currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Transportation Research Board and he is the Editor-in- Chief Emeritus of the Journal of Transportation Engineering. He has served on several Federal Advisory Committees in the US and has consulted for the World Bank on infrastructure and transportation issues. He is an Honorary Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering.

 

Member Profile: Arun Shirole, President, ATPIO

Mr. Shirolé is internationally well known for his engineering and management expertise. He has over 40 years of experience that covers planning, design, construction, rehabilitation and maintenance of bridges and highways. Previously he has served as a Senior Vice President of Arora and Associates, P.C. a consulting engineering firm and as the Executive Director of the National Steel Bridge Alliance (NSBA), a semi-autonomous division of the American Institute of Steel Construction. He is now NSBA’s Executive Director Emeritus. Mr. Shirole is current president of ATPIO and one of its four founding members.

Member Profile: Dr. Chandra Bhat

Dr. Chandra R. Bhat is the Director of the Center for Transportation Research (CTR) and the Adnan Abou-Ayyash Centennial Professor in Transportation Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, where he has a joint appointment between the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering (CAEE) and the Department of Economics. Bhat is a world-renowned expert in the area of transportation and urban policy design, with far reaching implications for public health, energy dependence, greenhouse gas emissions, and societal quality of life. Methodologically, he has been a pioneer in the formulation and use of statistical and econometric methods to analyze human choice behavior. His current research includes the social and environmental aspects of transportation, planning implications of connected and automated smart transportation systems (CASTS), and data science and predictive analytics. He is a recipient of many awards, including the 2017 Lifetime Achievement in Transportation Research and Education Award (Academic) from the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC). This award is to “identify individuals who have had a long history of significant and outstanding contribution to university transportation education and research resulting in a lasting contribution to transportation.” He also received the 2015 ASCE Frank Masters Award and the 2013 German Humboldt Award. In 2016, he was listed as the top ten transportation thought leaders in academia by CUTC and The Eno Foundation. He is a top-cited transportation engineering researcher.