MTI Appoints Deb Niemeier as Co-Director

A leading expert on societal and environmental impacts of transportation networks and urban infrastructure has been tapped to co-lead the Maryland Transportation Institute (MTI) as the institute expands the scope of its research activities and impact.

Civil and environmental engineering professor Deb Niemeier, who is the inaugural Clark Distinguished Chair at UMD’s A. James Clark School of Engineering, will advance new interdisciplinary MTI initiatives aimed at: (1) establishing a DataLab at MTI that will facilitate research data sharing, data science research, and data-driven decision-making; (2) bringing in expertise across campus to improve the multimodal transportation system and built environment; and (3) expanding existing MTI collaboration with partner universities in Maryland, including Morgan State University and University of Maryland-Baltimore.

“I look forward to working with MTI constituents to realize our shared vision for MTI—transforming MTI into an intellectual hub that promotes knowledge sharing and support decision-making at federal, state and local levels in collaboration with all our academic, government and private-sector partners,” Niemeier said.

“I am very excited that Professor Deb Niemeier will be taking on an important leadership role at MTI,” said Lei Zhang, MTI founding director and Herbert Rabin Distinguished Professor of civil and environmental engineering at UMD. “Her experience in successfully leading interdisciplinary research initiatives and her ability to promote collaboration among MTI-affiliated researchers and centers are invaluable. I cannot wait to start working together with her to take MTI to a whole new level of innovation and impact.”

Niemeier’s appointment as MTI co-director is effective as of March 16, 2020.

Published March 19, 2020