Lily Ageliki Elefteriadou, Ph.D., F.ASCE, the Barbara Goldsby Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Florida, has been named a fellow by the ASCE Board of Direction.
Elefteriadou is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on traffic operations, traffic flow theory, and simulation. Over the past 30 years, she has developed several methods and analysis tools that have been published in the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM), the major traffic operations publication used by most highway transportation agencies in the United States and widely referenced internationally. She chaired the Highway Capacity and Quality of Service Committee of the TRB, National Academies (2010-2016), which guides the development of the HCM.
In 2015, in partnership with FDOT and the City of Gainesville, Elefteriadou initiated the I-STREET living lab to develop, implement, and evaluate a variety of advanced transportation technologies in Gainesville and the UF campus. There are several projects underway related to I-STREET, many of which are multidisciplinary and involve numerous faculty across UF. As part of I-STREET, Elefteriadou led research projects with funding from NSF and FDOT to develop algorithms for smart intersections that would control automated/connected vehicle trajectories to optimize traffic flow.
In 2013 she founded the UF Transportation Institute, which she directed until 2024. The mission of the UFTI is to lead the profession in shaping a better transportation future by functioning as a preeminent center of multidisciplinary transportation research, students’ top choice for transportation education, and a provider of state-of-the-art analysis and decision-support tools. As Director of the UFTI, she developed, led, and/or managed the activities of several interdisciplinary research groups (Safety, Human Factors, etc.) and two auxiliary centers (McTrans and T2).
In 2011, and again in 2017, Elefteriadou led a team of 10 universities and was successful in winning the US DOT-funded Regional University Transportation Center for the southeast region, one of 10 such centers in the U.S. The focus of the consortium was on reducing congestion, and it produced numerous research publications and educational materials for undergraduate, graduate, and professional-level courses. She has authored or co-authored more than 200 publications and reports related to traffic operational quality and highway design, as well as a textbook titled Introduction to Traffic Flow Theory. She also serves on the editorial board of the Transportation Research: Part B and is past president of the executive board of the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC).
Elefteriadou is an AAAS fellow and has received several awards for her research, including the 2021 ARTBA Research and Education S.S. Steinberg Award, the 2019 ASCE Harland Bartholomew Award for her work on I-STREET, the 2015 ASCE James Laurie Prize for her contributions to highway capacity analysis, the 2015 ARTBA Ethel S. Birchland Lifetime Achievement Award, and TRB’s Fred Burggraf award for excellence in research in 2001.
