Erol Tutumluer holds a B.S. (Bogazici University 1989), two M.S. degrees (Duke University 1991 and Georgia Tech 1993), and a Ph.D. (Georgia Tech 1995), all in civil engineering. He has been on the faculty of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois since 1996.

Dr. Tutumluer has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in transportation soils engineering, subgrade soil and aggregate behavior and stabilization, introduction to transportation engineering, pavement analysis and design, and airport facilities design.

Dr. Tutumluer was the recipient of the Transportation Research Board's (TRB) Fred Burgraff Award for Excellence in Transportation Research in 2000.  He is an affiliate of the TRB and has chaired its AFS50(1) subcommittee on "Applications of Nontraditional Computing Tools Including Neural Nets."  He serves on TRB committees AFP70, AFP30, AFS50, and AFD80.  More recently, he has been selected as the 2009 recipient of the TRB's Geology and Properties of Earth Materials Section Best Paper Award for his paper, "Use of Falling Weight Deflectometer Testing to Determine Relative Damage in Asphalt Pavement Unbound Aggregate Layers."  The paper was nominated by AFP70 Mineral Aggregates Committee.

Since October 2008, Dr. Tutumluer has been an Associate Editor for the American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering.  In January 2009, he became an Editorial Board member for the ASCE International Journal of Geomechanics.  He also has been an Editorial Board Member of the International Journal of Pavement Engineering since 2004 and an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Pavement Research and Technology since 2007.

Dr. Tutumluer's professional involvements also include serving as chair of the ASCE Geo-Institute's Pavements Committee and the co-editor of five ASCE Geotechnical Special Publications on recent advances in transportation materials characterization, pavement engineering, and pavement mechanics and testing.  He is also a member of the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association (AREMA) Committee 1 on "Ballast."

For his teaching and scholarly service, Dr. Tutumluer was named a General Electric Scholar by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Engineering in 1997 and later that year received a certificate of recognition as an Engineering Education Scholar by the National Science Foundation (NSF).  Subsequently, he was named General Electric Fellow (1999) and Collins Fellow (2000) by the Academy of Excellence in Engineering Education Program administered by the College of Engineering; elected as a Campus Honors Program faculty member by the Chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2001); and listed in the campus Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students (2003 and 2008).

In October 2006, Dr. Tutumluer was recognized as the Paul F. Kent Endowed Faculty Scholar for his research accomplishments in the CEE department.