Key Personnel

Arizona State University

Ram M. Pendyala, PhD

Ram M. Pendyala, PhD

Director

Ram M. Pendyala is a Professor of Transportation Systems in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University. He serves as the Director of TOMNET. Pendyala is an expert in activity-travel behavior modeling and has led the development of a number of large scale behaviorally robust microsimulation model systems. He has published extensively in the literature and has served as the Chair of the Transportation Research Board Planning and Environment Group (2015-2018), Travel Analysis Methods Section (2009-2015), and Traveler Behaviour and Values Committee (2003-2009). He has also served as the Chair of the International Association for Travel Behavior Research (IATBR). He is currently an Associate Editor for Transportation Research Part D. He has his PhD and MS degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering with a specialization in transportation from the University of California at Davis, and his Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras. More…

Steven E. Polzin, PhD

Steven E. Polzin, PhD

Deputy Director

Steven E. Polzin a Research Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Arizona State University. He serves as the Deputy Director of TOMNET. Polzin’s current research focuses on transportation policy as influenced by the changes in demographics, technology and changing culture and values. In early 2021 he completed an appointment as the Senior Advisor for Research and Technology in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the US Department of Transportation. Previously he served as Director of Mobility Policy Research at the Center for Urban Transportation Research, University of South Florida. Prior positions included working for transit agencies in Chicago, Cleveland, and Dallas. He has served on the Board of Directors for Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority and on the Hillsborough County Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) Board. His professional interests include transportation policy, travel behavior and travel demand, transportation system performance, travel data analysis, transportation decision-making, and public transportation.

Deborah Salon, PhD

Deborah Salon, PhD

Associate Director

Deborah Salon is an Assistant Professor of Transportation in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University. She serves as an Associate Director of TOMNET. Salon studies transportation in cities with the goal of better understanding of how these systems work, and how policies and smart investments might improve them. The methods she uses range from qualitative, interview-based research to advanced econometric analysis. Salon has substantial experience with both discrete and continuous quantitative data analysis, survey design, GIS, and management of large datasets. Dr. Salon holds a PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California, Davis. Before joining the faculty at ASU, she completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and subsequently held a research appointment at UC Davis’s Institute of Transportation Studies. More…

Irfan Batur, PhD

Irfan Batur, PhD

Research Communications and Technology Transfer Coordinator

Irfan Batur is an Assistant Reserch Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University. He also serves as the Research Communications and Technology Transfer Coordinator of TOMNET. Batur is specializing in the field of transportation systems planning and his research interests include travel behavior, activity-time use, emerging mobility services, and sustainable transportation. He graduated from TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Turkey with a B.Eng. degree in Industrial Engineering and Istanbul Sehir University with an M.S.degree in Industrial and System Engineering. More…

Georgia Institute of Technology

Patricia L. Mokhtarian, PhD

Patricia L. Mokhtarian, PhD

Director of Research

Patricia Mokhtarian is the Susan G and Christopher D Pappas professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in August 2013, she served on the faculty at the University of California-Davis for 23 years, where she was a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, associate director of the Institute of Transportation Studies, and founding chair of the interdisciplinary MS/PhD program in Transportation Technology and Policy. Dr. Mokhtarian specializes in the study of traveler behavior and attitudes, and has authored more than 200 publications. She is a North American area editor of the journal Transportation (Springer). She has her PhD and Master’s degrees in Industrial Engineering/Management Science from Northwestern University and her Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Florida State University. More…​

Giovanni Circella, PhD

Giovanni Circella, PhD

Senior Investigator

Giovanni Circella joined the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA as a Research Engineer in November 2013. He currently splits his time between Georgia Tech and the University of California, Davis where he works as a part-time researcher at the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS). Prior to joining Georgia Tech, he worked for several years as a post-doctoral researcher in the Urban Land Use and Transportation (ULTRANS) Center at ITS-Davis. Dr. Circella’s research interests and skills include travel behavior analysis, travel demand modeling, and sustainable land use-transportation planning. He is a member of several committees of the Transportation Research Board. Dr. Circella has his Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral degrees from the Technical University of Bari in Italy. He also has a Master’s in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California at Davis. More…

University of South Florida

Fred L. Mannering, PhD

Fred L. Mannering, PhD

Associate Director

Fred Mannering is currently the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Engineering and a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering (with a courtesy appointment in Economics) at the University of South Florida. His research interests are in the application of econometric and statistical methods to a variety of transportation-related issues including highway safety, transportation economics, automobile demand, and travel behavior. He has published extensively in these fields and his work has been highly cited. Dr. Mannering is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier Science journal Analytic Methods in Accident Research (and founding Editor) and previous Editor-in-Chief (2003-2012) and current Associate Editor for Transportation Research Part B – Methodological, also an Elsevier Science journal. He previously held professorial appointments at the Pennsylvania State University, the University of Washington, and Purdue University. Dr. Mannering has his Bachelor’s in engineering from the University of Saskatchewan, Master’s from Purdue University, and PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. More…

Michael Maness, PhD

Michael Maness, PhD

Associate Director

Michael Maness is an Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida with research interests in the methodology and application of behavioral modeling in urban and regional systems. He has published research in leading transportation journals on advanced choice models with applications to car ownership, managed lanes, cycling behavior, activity behavior, and communication behavior. Dr. Maness’ professional experience has included a post-doctoral researcher position at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a graduate research fellowship at FHWA’s Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center. He is the recipient of the 2015 Eric Pas Dissertation Prize for his work on incorporating social interactions into activity and travel behavior models. He was also a 2015 University Transportation Centers Outstanding Student of the Year, a two-time Eisenhower Transportation Fellow, and a former Bridge to the Doctorate Fellow. More…

University of Washington

Cynthia Chen, PhD

Cynthia Chen, PhD

Associate Director of TOMNET

Cynthia Chen is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle (UW). Prior to joining UW, she served on the faculty at the City College of New York. She directs the THINK (Transportation-Human Interaction and Network Knowledge) lab, which conducts research on travel behavior analysis, resilient infrastructures, and their intersections. She is an Associate Editor for Transportation (Springer) and has served on a number of Transportation Research Board committees. Her research has appeared in leading journals of a number of interdisciplinary fields. She has her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Davis. She has her Master’s degree from New Jersey Institute of Technology, and her Bachelor’s degree from Nan Kai University, China. More…

Daniel Abramson, PhD

Daniel Abramson, PhD

Senior Investigator

Daniel Abramson is an Associate Professor in Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington (UW), where he also serves as an adjunct in the Departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and a member of the China Studies and Canadian Studies faculty. Before joining UW, he held a Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Human Settlements. Currently, he focuses his research on community resilience and adaptive planning in disaster recovery and hazard mitigation. Dr. Abramson has served on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Planning Association and is currently an editorial board member for Planning Perspectives. Dr. Abramson’s degrees include a B.A. in History from Harvard University; dual masters in Architecture and City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and a doctorate in Urban Planning from Tsinghua University in Beijing. More…