2015 Officers and New Members of TRB Executive Committee Announced

Daniel Sperling, Professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science and Policy; and Director, University of California, Davis Institute of Transportation Studies is the Committee’s 2015 Chair.

James M. Crites, Executive Vice President of Operations at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport is the Committee’s 2015 Vice Chair. Sperling and Crites will serve one-year terms in these offices, beginning January 15, 2015.

A newly appointed member of the Executive Committee is:

Geraldine Knatz, Professor of Practice in the Schools of Engineering and Public Policy at the University of Southern California and Member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), will serve a three-year term beginning January 15, 2015.

Reappointed members of the Executive Committee are:

Victoria A. Arroyo, Assistant Dean for Centers and Institutes, Professor from Practice, Environmental Law Program Director at the Georgetown University Law Center, and Executive Director of the Georgetown Climate Center, and Chris T. Hendrickson, (NAE) Hamerschlag University Professor of Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, will serve three-year terms beginning Jan. 15.

Sandra Rosenbloom, Research Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and Henry G. Schwartz, Jr., (NAE) Consultant at Jacobs/Sverdrup Civil, Inc. (Retired), will serve an additional one-year term beginning Jan. 15.

The mission of the Transportation Research Board is to provide leadership in transportation innovation and progress through research and information exchange, conducted within a setting that is objective, interdisciplinary, and multimodal. TRB facilitates the sharing of information on transportation practice and policy by researchers and practitioners; stimulates research and provides research management services that promote technical excellence; provides expert advice on transportation policy and programs; and disseminates research results broadly and encourages their implementation. TRB’s varied activities annually engage more than 7,000 engineers, scientists, and other transportation researchers and practitioners from the public and private sectors and academia, all of whom contribute their expertise in the public interest by participating on TRB committees, panels, and task forces. TRB is supported by state departments of transportation, federal agencies including the component administrations of the U.S. Department of Transportation, and other organizations and individuals interested in the development of transportation.

2015 New and Reappointed TRB Executive Committee Officers

Daniel Sperling is professor of civil engineering and environmental science and policy, and founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1982. He is an international expert on transportation technology assessment, energy and environmental aspects of transportation, and transportation and climate policy. He has authored and co-authored more than 200 technical papers and 12 books, including Two Billion Cars (Oxford University Press, 2009) and Driving Climate Change: Cutting Carbon from Transportation (Elsevier 2007). He received the 2013 Blue Planet Prize for being “a pioneer in opening up new fields of study to create more efficient, low-carbon, and environmentally beneficial transportation systems.”

Sperling is an expert on public policy aspects of sustainable transportation, and he was appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger to the California Air Resources Board in 2007. He has served on 13 National Research Council committees, was founding chair of the TRB committee on Alternative Transportation Fuels, and first chair of the TRB Committee on Sustainable Transportation. Sperling earned a Ph.D. in transportation engineering from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor of Science degree in systems analysis/urban planning (environmental engineering) from Cornell University.

James M. Crites is executive vice president for the operations division of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. He oversees the activities of planning, airport operations, airport maintenance, public safety, and environmental affairs. He is currently serving as a member of: the Subcommittee of the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) NextGen Advisory Committee; the University of Texas at Arlington, College of Engineering Advisory Board Chairman; and the Airports Council International – North America Operations and Technical Affairs Committee. Crites was recognized by the president of the United States in 2013 as “Champion of Change” for his leadership and collaboration in the joint FAA-aviation community effort to implement the Next Generation Air Transportation System. Crites earned a Master Degree in Operations Research from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California and a Bachelor of Science in business administration at the University of Illinois.

Geraldine Knatz (NAE) is professor of the practice of policy and engineering, a joint appointment between the University of Southern California (USC) Price School of Public Policy and USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Knatz served as the managing director of the Port of Los Angeles from 2006 to January 2014. Prior to directing the Port of Los Angeles, Knatz served as the director of the Port of Long Beach. Knatz is a past president of the American Association of Port Authorities and past president of the International Association of Ports and Harbors, and currently serves as the Chairman of the World Port Climate Initiative. She serves as Gov. Brown’s appointee on the Ocean Protection Council. Knatz has received numerous awards, including Outstanding Women in Transportation from the Journal of Commerce, 2007; Woman Executive of the Year from the Los Angeles Business Journal, 2007; Compass Award from the Women’s Leadership Exchange, 2008; an honorary Ph.D. from the Maine Maritime Academy, 2009; and the Peter Benchley Ocean Award from the Blue Frontier Campaign, 2012. In 2014, she was named a member of the NAE in recognition of her international leadership in the engineering and development of environmentally clean urban seaports. Knatz earned a Ph. D. in biological sciences from the University of Southern California, a Master of Science in environmental engineering from the University of Southern California, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in in zoology from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey-New Brunswick.

Victoria A. Arroyo is assistant dean for Centers and Institutes, professor from Practice and Environmental Law Program director at the Georgetown University Law Center. For more than five years she has also served as executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center which serves as a resource to states and others on climate, energy and transportation issues. She previously served as vice president for domestic policy and general counsel at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. For more than a decade, she directed the Pew Center's policy analysis, science, adaptation, economics, and domestic policy programs. In addition to teaching at Georgetown Law, she has taught courses on environmental policy and climate change at Catholic University, George Mason University's graduate public policy program, and Tulane Law School. Previously, she practiced environmental law with Kilpatrick Stockton and other private firms and served in two offices at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: the Office of Air and Radiation and the Office of Research and Development. She has recently served on California's Economics and Allocation Advisory Committee advising California Air Resources Board on cap-and-trade design; on the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) external advisory committee; and on a National Academy of Sciences Transportation Research Board Committee on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. She is currently serving a three-year term on an advisory committee to the National Science Foundation and as a member of the Board of Trustees for the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (a consortium of research universities which oversees NCAR). She also serves on the editorial boards of the Climate Policy journal and the Georgetown International Environmental Law Review. Arroyo earned a J.D. from Georgetown Law School, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Georgetown International Environmental Law Review; a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University; and a Bachelor of Science in biology and philosophy from Emory University.

Chris T. Hendrickson (NAE) is the Hamerschlag University professor, civil and environmental engineering and co-director of the Green Design Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His research, teaching, and consulting are in the general area of engineering planning and management, including design for the environment, project management, transportation systems, finance, and computer applications. Current research projects include life-cycle assessment methods, assessment of alternative construction materials, economic and environmental implications of e-commerce, product take-back planning, and infrastructure for alternative fuels. He has co-authored three textbooks, including Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Goods and Services: An Input-Output Approach (Resources for the Future, 2005), as well as two monographs. In addition, he has published numerous articles in the professional literature. Hendrickson is a member of the NAE, a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE), an Emeritus Member of the TRB standing committee on the Application of Emerging Technologies to Design and Construction, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Hendrickson earned a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Master of Philosophy in economics from Oxford University, a Master of Science in civil engineering from Stanford University, and a Bachelor of Science in general engineering from Stanford University.

Sandra Rosenbloom is research professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, she directed an infrastructure initiative at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. She was also professor of planning and director of the Roy P. Drachman Institute for Land and Regional Development Studies at the University of Arizona. Rosenbloom has authored numerous publications in the field of transportation planning and on the impact of societal trends on transportation and community development. Among her major awards and fellowships, Rosenbloom received the inaugural Roger Tate Award for Outstanding Contributions to Accessible Transportation Research in 1999, was a member of the Leadership Council of the Urban Land Institute from 1998 to 2000, and received TRB’s Roy W. Crum Award for 2004. Rosenbloom served as the TRB Executive Committee chair in 2012. An active participant on many TRB Standing Committees, Rosenbloom earned a Ph.D. in political science and a Master in Public Administration from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Henry G. Schwartz, Jr. (NAE) retired from the post of senior professor and director of the engineering management program at Washington University in St. Louis. Schwartz is a nationally recognized civil and environmental engineering leader who spent most of his career with Sverdrup Civil Inc. (now Jacobs Civil Inc.), which he joined in 1966. In 1993, Schwartz was named president and chairman, directing the transportation, public works, and environmental activities of Sverdrup/Jacobs Civil Inc. before he retired in 2003. He has served on the advisory boards for Carnegie Mellon University, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Texas at Austin, and has served as president of the Academy of Science of St. Louis. He is founding chairman of the Water Environment Research Foundation and served as president of the Water Environment Federation. Schwartz is past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers and was a member of the Civil Engineering Research Foundation Board of Directors.

Elected to the NAE in 1997, he has served on a number of NRC study committees, including the TRB Committee for a Future Strategic Highway Research Program, and on the NRC Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment. He chaired the policy study committee that produced the report, Potential Impacts of Climate Change on U.S. Transportation. He currently serves as vice chair of TRB’s Subcommittee for NRC Oversight. Schwartz earned a Ph.D. degree from the California Institute of Technology and Master of Science and Bachelor of Science degrees from Washington University. He is a registered professional engineer.