Vita

    Two of Dr. Bhat's most important accomplishments

Dr. Chandra R. Bhat is the Adnan Abou-Ayyash Centennial Professor in Transportation Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches courses in transportation systems analysis and transportation planning.  He also recently served as the Associate Chairman of the Department of Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering.

Dr. Bhat is recognized nationally and internationally as a leading expert in the area of travel demand modeling and travel behavior analysis.  His substantive research interests include land-use and travel demand modeling, activity-based travel modeling, policy evaluation of the effect of transportation control and congestion pricing measures on traffic congestion and mobile-source emissions, marketing research of competitive positioning strategies for transportation services, use of non-motorized modes of travel, and physical health and transportation.  His methodological research interests and expertise are in the areas of econometric and mathematical modeling of consumer behavior, including discrete choice analysis, discrete-continuous econometric systems, and hazard duration models.  His methodological works are widely referenced in the economics, marketing, geography, statistics, and transportation fields, and have been included in econometric textbooks and software packages.  He has authored several book chapters focusing on improved methods for choice modeling in general and land use-travel demand modeling in particular.  Dr. Bhat’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, State Departments of Transportation, including TxDOT, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, and the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Dr. Bhat received the 2004 Walter L. Huber Award and the 2005 James Laurie Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in recognition of his contributions to “innovative methods in transportation systems analysis and modeling.”  He also received the 2006 Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company Award for Excellence in Engineering Teaching, awarded by the College of Engineering at UT Austin, and the 2006-2007 Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, awarded by the UT Graduate School (see also http://www.engr.utexas.edu/news/awards.cfm#bhatout). Dr. Bhat won the 2007 Pyke Johnson Award from the Transportation Research Board (TRB) for the best paper in the area of planning and environment, for a paper he co-authored with two former PhD students.  He was selected as the 2008 recipient of the Wilbur S. Smith Distinguished Transportation Educator Award by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) (see also http://www.engr.utexas.edu/news/articles/200809081554/index.cfm). He also is a 2008 Jefferson Science Fellow Selectee and was conferred the 2008 Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award by the Texas Institute of Transportation Engineers. Dr. Bhat has supervised two MS students whose theses won the Milton Pikarsky Memorial Award in the Transportation Science and Technology area in the years 2000 and 2001.  In addition, one of his PhD students received the 2004 Charley V. Wootan Memorial Award for the best North American dissertation in the Transportation Policy and Planning area, and another of his students received the 2008 Charley V. Wootan Memorial Award. Overall, his students have won more than 26 regional, state, and national awards in the past 9 years. Dr. Bhat has provided resource papers/primers at leading conferences and symposiums, and has several published articles in journals and transportation books.

Dr. Bhat has been invited and/or elected to serve on several international and national transportation committees, including the International Association for Travel Behavior Research and five Transportation Research Board (TRB) committees/task forces.  He recently served as the Chair of the International Association for Travel Behavior Research, and is a member of the Board of Directors of this association.  He is the Co-Chair of the TRB Committee on Transportation Education and Training (ABG20) and recently served as Chair of the Committee on Transportation Demand Forecasting (ADB40).  He is also the Associate Editor of Transportation Research-Part B, and serves on the editorial boards of Transportation, the Journal of Choice Modelling, the International Journal of Operations and Quantitative Management, Transportation Letters: The International Journal of Transportation Research, and the Journal of Choice Modelling.

Dr. Bhat has been a consultant for activity-based travel modeling for MPOs, has conducted research for the Boston MPO in the past on improvements to travel demand modeling, and is currently working with the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) on an ongoing activity-based travel modeling project.  He has worked with Parsons Brinckerhoff and Cambridge Systematics as a consultant for developing and implementing integrated land-use, transportation, and air quality models.  He was on a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Panel to review the travel demand modeling procedures of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) in Washington D.C.  He has served as a Peer Review Panelist for several MPOS, including those in the San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Los Angeles, New Jersey, Calgary, and St. Louis areas. Locally, he was the technical advisor to a Blue Ribbon Task Force constituted by the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce to review and assess Capital Metro's light rail proposal for Austin.

Last modified: October 2009