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Directory profile for Dr. Robert L. Bertini, P.E.

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Dr. Robert L. Bertini, P.E.

Department Head, Professor, Chief Transportation Science R&D Officer for the Alabama Transportation Institute

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Research Areas

Education

  • Ph.D., Civil Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1999
  • M.S., Civil Engineering, San José State University, 1991
  • B.S. cum laude, Civil Engineering, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, 1988 [Music minor in French horn performance]

Robert L. Bertini is Professor and Head of the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering. He also serves as Chief Transportation Science Research and Development Officer with the Alabama Transportation Institute.

Founding director of the Portland State University Intelligent Transportation Systems Laboratory and the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium. Served as director or associate director for five National and Tier One University Transportation Research Centers. Served as the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Deputy Administrator for Research and Innovative Technology, where he led the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office, strengthened collaboration with the European Commission and Japan, and chaired the U.S. DOT Innovation Council.

Received NSF CAREER Award for development of online multimodal transportation data repository that is a platform for performance measurement, modeling, and prediction. He has delivered the Ogden Lecture (Monash University), the Melvin Webber Memorial Lecture (UC Irvine), and the Warren Lecture (University of Minnesota). Recognized a fellow by the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Institute of Transportation Engineers and as a senior member of IEEE. Longtime volunteer with the National Academies’ Transportation Research Board, where he chairs the Safety and Operations Group and is a member of Technical Activities Council.

He earned a bachelor’s in civil engineering from California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, a master’s in civil engineering from San José State University, and a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a licensed professional engineer in California, Florida, and Oregon.

Affiliated Areas
Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, Alabama Transportation Institute

Selected Publications

  • *Staes, B., Wang, H., and Bertini, R.L. “Development of a Length-Based Cell-State Framework Toward the Re-Creation of Large-Scale Dense Congestion Patterns,” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, April 2024. doi: 10.1177/03611981241243328
  • Islam, M., and Bertini, R.L. “Exploring the Effect of COVID-19 on Driver Injury Severities in Freeway Single-vehicle Crashes Accounting for Unobserved Heterogeneity,” Transportation Letters: the International Journal of Transportation Research, June 2023. doi: 10.1080/19427867.2023.2229564
  • *Yuksel, E., Bertini, R.L., Li, X., *Staes, B., and Ozkul, S. ” Data-Driven Computation of State-Dependent Passenger Car Equivalency for Multiple Truck Lengths,” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, May 2022. doi: 10.1177/03611981221092008
  • *Staes, B., Bertini, R.L., Menon, N., and *Yuksel, Y. “Examining Freeway Bottleneck Features During a Mass Evacuation,” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, March 2021. doi: 10.1177/03611981211003588
  • *Palaio, L., *Vo, T., Maness, M., Bertini, R.L., and Menon, N. “A Multi-City Investigation of the Effect of Holidays on Bikeshare System Ridership,” Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, July 2021. doi: 10.1177/03611981211019739
  • *Staes, B., Menon, N., and Bertini, R.L. “Analyzing Transportation Network Performance During Emergency Evacuations: Evidence from Hurricane Irma.” Transportation Research, Part D, Volume 95, June 2021. doi: 10.1016/j.trd.2021.102841
  • Wang, Y., Wang, L., Guo, J., Papamichail, I., Papageorgiou, M., Wang, F., Bertini, R.L., Hua, W., and Yang, Q., “Ego-efficient Lane Changes of Connected and Automated Vehicles with Impacts on Traffic Flow,” Transportation Research Part C, 2022. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2021.103478
  • *Wierbos, M.J., Knoop, V.L., Bertini, R.L., and Hoogendoorn, S.P. “Influencing Bicycle Jam Density and its Effect on the Queue Discharge Process,” Transportation Research Part C, Vol. 122, 2020. doi: 10.1016/j.trc.2020.102884
  • Xu, Z., Wang, Y., Wang, G., Li, X., and Bertini, R.L. “Trajectory Optimization for A Connected Automated Traffic Stream: Comparison between An Exact Model and Fast Heuristics,” IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Vol. 22, Issue 5, May 2021. doi: 10.1109/TITS.2020.2978382

Awards and Honors

  • National Science Foundation CAREER Award
  • Fellow, American Society of Civil Engineers and Institute of Transportation Engineers
  • Senior Member, IEEE
  • Peter DeFazio Transportation Hall of Fame Award, Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium [OTREC], Portland State University
  • Melvin Webber Memorial Lecture, University of California Transportation Center [UCTC] Student Conference, University of California Irvine

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