About Us

Old Dominion University has launched a number of new transportation initiatives in an effort to deal with regional, state, and national concerns about mobility and safety. A key initiative has been the creation of a new program within the Civil and Environmental Engineering department that focuses on surface transportation issues. The program currently has the following faculty members, Dr. Asad Khattak, Dr. Michael Fontaine, Mr. Dwight Farmer,and Dr. Camelia Ravanbakht.

As part of this initiative, the transportation education program within the CEE department has been strengthened considerably. A graduate program offers Master's and Ph.D. degrees, and our course offerings have increased substantially. Funding is available for qualified full-time graduate students.

The transportation research program at ODU is also very active. The ODU Transportation Research Institute was recently created to deal with a variety of issues related to mobility, safety, planning, freight, and energy on surface transportation systems. A Transportation Research Cluster has also been formed to facilitate interdisciplinary transportation research among faculty in different academic departments, particularly for multimodal and intermodal problems.

2006 Transportation Annual Report

ODU CEE Transportation Program Mission

The mission of the ODU CEE transportation program is to contribute to the advancement of transportation in three ways:

• Research: The development of knowledge that expands our current body of transportation engineering knowledge and stimulates applications of new strategies/technologies, involving planning, design, and operations of the transportation system. The development of the transportation engineering profession through applied research is important.
• Education: The education of future and current transportation professionals is one of the most important issues facing the country. Undergraduate and graduate students are introduced to transportation issues and learn approaches that have been taken or proposed to solve those problems. The graduate program will train students from diverse backgrounds as professionals who plan, design, and manage the transportation systems of cities and regions in both domestic and international settings.
• Public service: Our commitment to knowledge transfer and public service is meant to provide immediate benefits to the university, citizens of the state, nation, and a number of countries. Important aspects are dissemination of knowledge to transportation practitioners, agencies, and other stakeholders, student internships in government agencies, and student and faculty involvement in TRB (Transportation Research Board), ITE ( Institute of Transportation Engineers) and ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) activities.