Dr. Behzad Aghdashi is the newly appointed Director of the McTrans Center. Dr. Aghdashi previously worked as the Driver and Transportation Analytics Lab (DaTA Lab) manager at the Institute for Transportation Research and Education (ITRE) at North Carolina State University (NCSU). Dr. Aghdashi, a certified project manager (PMP), also served as an adjunct assistant professor at the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering (CCEE) at NCSU. 

Dr. Aghdashi’s areas of expertise include traffic operations on freeways and surface streets, simulation analysis, software development, and mathematical optimization. Dr. Aghdashi has over 10 years of professional experience focusing on research in transportation engineering. Additionally, he was involved in several funded projects related to the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), Strategic Highway Research Program 2 (SHRP 2), Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Department of Energy (DOE), North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), Southeastern Transportation Research Innovation, Development and Education Center (STRIDE), and University of Maryland National Transportation Center (NTC). 

Through several research projects, he developed methods for the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) to evaluate the operational conditions of freeway facilities. He has also authored or co-authored several peer-reviewed journal articles, conference proceedings, and has given numerous presentations at state, and national conferences. 

Presently, Dr. Aghdashi serves as a member of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) standing committee on Highway Capacity and Quality of Service. Dr. Aghdashi has extensive experience in developing online and offline tools, dashboards, and databases. Under his supervision, the ITRE DaTA Lab developed more than a dozen tools, dashboards, and databases and hosted them on the NCSU university infrastructure to serve the transportation community for a variety of practical applications as well as research.