Transportation Engineering Faculty

Imad L. Al-Qadi

Professor
Founder Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Professor Al-Qadi’s teaching and research interests focus primarily on pavement mechanics and advanced modeling, asset management systems, infrastructure condition assessment and rehabilitation, pavement interlayer systems, and nondestructive evaluation. He has been working on transportation infrastructure instrumentation, full-scale accelerated testing, modeling of pavement viscoelastic response to tire loading, pavement fracture and modeling of pavement interface systems, polymerized asphalt rheology, pavement material recycling optimization, and ground penetrating radar signal analysis. 

Christopher P. L. Barkan

Associate Professor
Krambles Faculty Fellow

Dr. Barkan's research program is focused on railroad safety and risk analyses with particular emphasis on derailment prevention, tank car design and hazardous materials aspects. He is also directing the AAR project developing a North American standard for a spill-proof fuel delivery system for railroad locomotives.

Rahim F. Benekohal

Professor

Dr. Benekohal has conducted numerous studies for state and federal governments on development, evaluation and analysis of transportation systems. He has written more than 120 journal articles, conference papers, and technical reports.

William G. Buttlar

Associate Professor
Narbey Khachaturian Faculty Scholar

Dr. Buttlar’s research focuses on the experimental and analytical characterization of the physical properties of asphalt mixtures, particularly at low temperatures. His work as a research team member of the Strategic Highway Research Program A005 led to the development of the SUPERPAVE indirect tensile test (IDT), now required for level II and III mixture designs using SUPERPAVE. Dr. Buttlar has been involved in developing standardized test procedures for the IDT for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM).

Samuel H. Carpenter

Professor Emeritus

Dr. Carpenter's research focuses on performance characterization and implementation of Superpave asphalt mixtures for the Illinois DOT, the Division of Aeronautics, and the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority. As part of the Federal Aviation Administration's Center of Excellence for Airport Technology, he helped develop new fatigue characterization methods for asphalt mixtures that will greatly enhance mechanistic pavement design philosophies with new support for a fatigue endurance limit for asphalt mixtures. His work for Caterpillar Inc. has pioneered innovative testing to determine the deformation characteristics of hot mix asphalt prior to and during compaction.

J. Riley Edwards

Instructor, Railroad Engineering Program

Edwards has research interests in the areas of railroad civil engineering, railroad applications of machine vision, and railroad infrastructure maintenance and management planning.