| Joseph
M. Sussman
JR East Professor of Civil
and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Systems
Dr. Joseph M. Sussman is the
JR East Professor (endowed by the East Japan Railway Company)
in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
and the Engineering Systems Division at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), where he has served as a
faculty member for 40 years. He is the author of Introduction
to Transportation Systems, a graduate text published
in 2000, in use at a number of universities in the U.S.
and abroad. It has been translated into Greek, Chinese and
Spanish. His book Perspectives on Intelligent Transportation
Systems (ITS) was published in 2005. Sussman received
the Roy W. Crum Distinguished Service Award from TRB, its
highest honor, “for significant contributions to research”
in 2001, and the CUTC Award for Distinguished Contribution
to University Transportation Education and Research from
the Council of University Transportation Centers in 2003.
In 2002 ITS Massachusetts named its annual “Joseph
M. Sussman Leadership Award” in his honor. He became
a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science in 2007. The Engineering School Alumni of the
City College of New York (CCNY) gave him its 2008 Career
Achievement Award.
He initiated the transportation
systems focus area for the MIT-Portugal Program, a major
$40 million, five-year program of education and research
that was launched in 2006. His work here includes participation
in the development of a new international MSc degree in
transportation systems in collaboration with three Portuguese
universities, and research in Regional Strategic Transportation
Planning (RSTP), Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)
and High-Speed Rail.
Dr. Sussman specializes in the
study of “Complex, Large-Scale, Interconnected, Open,
Sociotechnical” (CLIOS) Systems, working in many applications
areas, and has developed the CLIOS Process to study such
systems. He has focused recently on developing a new methodology
for regional strategic transportation planning (RSTP) as
a special case of the CLIOS Process, integrating ideas from
strategic management, scenario-building, and technology
architectures, and applying it to cases in the U.S. and
abroad. Currently his work in this area deals with transportation,
technology and sustainability in Mexico City and Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, and most recently in Portugal.
He has worked extensively on
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), helping to build
the U.S. national program. While serving as the first Distinguished
University Scholar at IVHS AMERICA (1991–1992), he
was a member of the core group that wrote the Strategic
Plan for IVHS in the U.S., a 20-year plan for research,
development, testing and deployment that has shaped the
U.S. ITS program. He has worked on the development of an
“intelligent corridor” in Bangkok, a comparison
of ITS programs in Western Europe, Japan and the U.S., commercial
vehicle operations, building regional ITS architectures,
emergency response and institutional issues concerning ITS
and the provision of “flexibility” in surface
transportation through ITS technologies, including studies
in Houston, Portugal and in connection with Vehicle-Infrastructure
Integration (VII). He was the program chair of the ITS America
Annual Meeting in 2000, and has conducted short courses
in ITS for practicing professionals in the U.S. and abroad.
Currently, he serves as the chairman of the ITS Advisory
Committee—mandated by SAFETEA-LU—for the US
DOT, charged with advising the department on all facets
of the ITS program.
Dr. Sussman's research in railroads
focuses on service reliability, rail operations, maintenance,
high-speed rail (HSR), and risk assessment; he has had a
major impact on the railroad industry in the U.S. and abroad,
and has several prize-winning papers. He has worked with
the Union Internationale des Chemins de Fer (UIC) on technology
scanning for the international freight and passenger railroad
industry, and most recently with Portugal.
Dr. Sussman chaired the TRB committee
overseeing the Federal Railroad Administration’s R&D
program from 1996 to 1999 and in 2006 chaired, in 2006,
a TRB panel reviewing the federal transportation strategic
plan for R&D. Further, he chaired a TRB Task Force that
produced a major report entitled “Airport System Capacity
— Strategic Choices” in 1990.
He has worked on the application
of computers to engineering problem solving, specializing
in simulation methods and their application to the transportation
area, and he contributed to the development of ICES (Integrated
Civil Engineering System), among the most widely-used computer
systems in the engineering field. He has developed and taught
undergraduate and graduate subjects in transportation, engineering
systems, information systems, simulation methods, intelligent
transportation systems, and technology and policy, and has
written extensively on transportation education philosophy
and program design. In 1997 he won the Civil and Environmental
Engineering Department’s Effective Teaching Award.
In 2002 he won the Technology and Policy Student Society
“Faculty Appreciation Award” for his design
and teaching of a new required subject called “Introduction
to Technology and Policy.” He has served on review
panels for transportation programs at Northwestern, the
University of Toronto, Cornell, and the University of Michigan
(chair). He currently serves on advisory committees at CCNY
and Cal-IT2, a joint venture of UC-Irvine and
UC-San Diego, and chairs the Board of Advisors at the Technical
University of Delft in the Multi-Actor Systems (MAS) area
in the Program on Technology and Policy.
Dr. Sussman earned a B.C.E. from
the City College of New York in 1961, an M.S.C.E. from the
University of New Hampshire in 1963, and a Ph.D. in Civil
Engineering Systems from MIT in 1967. He joined the MIT
faculty in 1967. From 1977 to 1979, Professor Sussman served
as the Associate Dean of Engineering for Educational Programs.
From 1980 to 1985, he served as Head of the Department of
Civil Engineering at MIT. From 1986 to 1991, he served as
Director of the Center for Transportation Studies (CTS)
at MIT. During his term, research volume grew by 400 percent,
to more than $4 million annually at that time, reflecting
an important expansion of CTS’s research agenda.
Dr. Sussman is a member of the
American Society of Civil Engineers, the Transportation
Research Forum, the Transportation Research Board (Executive
Committee chair in 1994; member, 1991–1998), ITS America
(Board of Directors, 1995–2001) and ITS Massachusetts
(Board of Directors, 1996–2001). He co-founded Multisystems
of Cambridge, MA in 1966 (now part of Transystems).
Dr. Sussman’s webpage may
be accessed at by clicking here.
You may access his books page
here.
To access his MIT OpenCourseWare
sites:
Updated June 2008
News and announcements:
Books
Published by Joseph M. Sussman
Joseph Sussman quoted in article
about recent traffic jams in Boston (The Boston Globe
- August 25, 2009)
ESD
Faculty Summer Reading List 2009 (June 19, 2009)
Joseph
Sussman quoted in article about Chinese railroad industry
(BusinessWeek - June 17, 2009)
Prof.
Joseph Sussman honored with Joseph A. Martore Excellence
in Teaching Award (April 10, 2009)
Prof.
Joe Sussman in Newsweek on U.S. failure to invest in high-quality
rail travel – All Eyes on Amtrak (July 14, 2008)
Articles
by Professors de Neufville and Sussman in summer issue of
The Bridge, on Airport and Intelligent Transportation Systems
(June 26, 2008)
ESD
Faculty Summer Reading List 2008 (June 2, 2008)
Joseph
Sussman interviewed about transportation policy in GOOD
Magazine
(April 11, 2009)
Joseph
Sussman quoted in ABC News story on high-speed trains
(April 12, 2009)
CCNY
to honor Sussman for career achievement (April 3, 2008)
U.S.
Department of Transportation appoints Prof. Sussman to chair
Intelligent Transportation Systems Advisory Committee
(February 18, 2008)
Seven
from MIT named AAAS Fellows, including ESD/CEE Prof. Joe
Sussman (November 5, 2007)
Sussman
named AAAS Fellow (October 26, 2007)
Prof.
Joe Sussman appears in NECN segment on traffic congestion
(September 20, 2007)
Prof.
Joseph Sussman to speak at China Planning Network's First
Urban Transportation Congress (July 31, 2007)
Prof.
Joe Sussman Named to ITS Advisory Committe (July 27,
2007)
Prof.
Sussman keynotes at LNEC’s 60th anniversary symposium
(June 28, 2007)
ESD
Faculty Summer Reading List 2007 (May 29, 2007)
ITS
Oregon Luncheon with Professor Joseph Sussman (May 8,
2007)
Something
a little different from Prof. Joe Sussman (March 28,
2007)
Prof.
Sussman chaired TRB committee that reviewed USDOT strategic
research, development and technology plan (August 17,
2006)
ESD
Faculty Summer Reading List 2006 (June 5, 2006)
Prof.
Sussman on "Star Wars" exhibit (November 9,
2005)
Prof.
Joe Sussman on BBC Radio's "Masterminds" (October
5, 2005)
Prof.
Sussman offers MIT news office new "Perspectives"
on traffic (July 6, 2005)
ESD
Suggested Summer Reading 2005 (May 23, 2005)
Prof.
Sussman on NPR: Future of high-speed rail (April 21,
2005)
Prof.
Joe Sussman publishes "Perspectives on Intelligent
Transportation Systems" (April 12, 2005)
Sussman
Wins CUTC Award (December 2003)
Second
Annual Charles L. Miller Lecture Opening Remarks by Professor
Joe Sussman (April 14, 2003)
ITS
MA Establishes Joseph M. Sussman Leadership Award (October
2002)
The
ESD Working Paper Discussion Series by Professor Joseph
M. Sussman (September 2002)
Professor
Joseph Sussman publishes
New Book on Transportation Systems
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