The American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) has awarded UFTI’s very own Dr. Lily Elefteriadou with the Ethel S. Birchland Lifetime Achievement Award.
ARTBA advocates for strong investment in the U.S. transportation design and construction industry. It also hosts the Women Leaders in Transportation Design and Construction (WLTDC) Council, which promotes leadership and career advancement for professional women through networking, mentoring, recognition and educational activities. The Ethel S. Birchland Lifetime Achievement Award, named after ARTBA’s executive director from the 1920’s, is given to at least one woman who has demonstrated outstanding leadership and long-term service in the industry’s public or private sectors.
“I’m very happy and honored to receive this important recognition from ARTBA,” Dr. Elefteriadou said. “They are such a strong organization that advocates for transportation interests and I’m very happy to be apart of it.”
Dr. Elefteriadou is the Director of the UF Transportation Institute (UFTI) and the Kisinger Campo Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Florida. Her research focus is traffic operations, traffic flow theory and simulation. She is the principal investigator of the US DOT-funded Regional University Transportation Center for Region 4 (Southeast Transportation Research Innovation Development and Education, or STRIDE). STRIDE involves seven other universities in the southeast and is funded with $6.8 Million from the US DOT plus an equal amount of cost sharing from non-federal sources (period of performance is January 2012 to January 2016). STRIDE focuses on issues of livability, safety and economic competitiveness.
She has served as the principal investigator for several other federal and state projects, funded by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Federal Highway Administration, PennDOT and FDOT. She has authored or co-authored more than one hundred publications and reports related to traffic operational quality and highway design, as well as a textbook titled “Introduction to Traffic Flow Theory”. Dr. Elefteriadou serves on the Editorial Board of the Transportation Research: Part B, and is the Chair of the Transportation Research Board’s Highway Capacity and Quality of Service Committee. She is also on the Executive Board of the Council of University Transportation Centers and was the 2014-2015 President of the ARTBA Research and Education Council.