Transportation Engineering

• Characterization and modelling of the behaviour of construction materials
• Smart pavement materials and structures
• Mechanistic pavement design methods
• Optimization of the use of recycled materials in sustainable infrastructure system
• Sustainable development, Life Cycle Analysis

Chris Bachmann is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Waterloo, and a Professional Engineer (P.Eng) in the Province of Ontario. He holds a BASc, MASc, and PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Toronto. He also holds a Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET) from the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business at the University of Waterloo.
 
Dr. Bachmann's expertise includes transportation engineering and sustainable infrastructure. His transportation research includes contributions in spatial economic and transport interaction, international trade and freight transportation, and transportation planning and demand forecasting. His research group has worked with various agencies including Transport Canada, the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO), the Region of Waterloo, the City of Waterloo, the City of Kitchener, Miovision, Canada West Foundation (CWF), and Innovation Science and Economic Development (ISED) Canada. In 2017, he received the Transportation Research Board’s (TRB’s) Fred Burggraf Award for excellence in transportation research by researchers 35 years of age or younger. In 2022, he received an Early Researcher Award from the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and Universities.
 
Dr. Bachmann regularly teaches "Economics and Life Cycle Cost Analysis" (CIVE 392) and "Transportation Engineering Applications" (CIVE 341) to undergraduate engineering students at the University of Waterloo. He also teaches "Modelling Transportation, Land Use and Spatial Economics" (CIVE 645) to graduate engineering students. In 2019, he received the University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award for an ongoing record of excellence in undergraduate teaching.

Jeff Casello is a Professor jointly-appointed in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo. He is also the lead researcher in The Waterloo Public Transportation Initiative (WPTI), which is a UWaterloo research group that provides expertise in urban transportation planning and engineering in order to address the challenges relevant to Canadian and global cities.

Professor Casello’s primary research interest is in the development and application of quantitative models of transportation (particularly transit and non-motorized modes) system performance. He is also interested in researching the impacts of transportation investments on land use patterns and has published extensively on these topics.

Professor Casello specializes in the planning, design and operation of public transportation systems. He is the lead author (with Vukan R. Vuchic) of Transit Planning for the Institute of Transportation Engineer’s (ITE) 3rd edition of the “Transportation Planning Handbook”. In addition, he is an acknowledged contributor to two seminal texts in the field: “Urban Transit Systems and Technology” and “Urban Transit Planning, Operations and Economics”, both by Professor Vuchic.

Professionally, Professor Casello has worked as a consultant, instructor and researcher with many transit agencies in the US, Canada and abroad. These include Singapore (LTA), Washington DC (WMATA), Houston (METRO), Philadelphia (SEPTA), the Regional Municipality of Waterloo (GRT), the City of Kingston, and Mexico City (D.F.). He has also worked in the public sector for the New York State Department of Transportation.

As a result of his work, Professor Fu received the Transportation Association of Canada (TAC)'s 2011 Academic Merit Award for his long-term contribution to the development of the academic field.

Professor Bruce Hellinga is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Waterloo where he teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in the areas of transportation and economics and conducts and supervises applied and fundamental research. His main areas of expertise include traffic flow theory and modelling, traffic engineering, active transportation, traffic sensor data analytics, transit operations, and ITS. He has over 25 years of experience in the field of traffic engineering and ITS and during that time has authored more than 125 refereed technical publications. Professor Hellinga has conducted fundamental and applied research for and in partnership with a wide range of public and private sector entities.

Prof. Pejoohan Tavassoti is an Assistant Professor and the Jr. Norman W. McLeod Chair in Sustainable Pavement Engineering at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Waterloo, where he is closely working with the Centre for Pavement and Transportation Technology (CPATT). Prior to joining the University of Waterloo, Prof. Tavassoti worked as an Assistant Research Professor at the Thomas D. Larson Transportation Institute of the Pennsylvania State University. His research revolves around promoting sustainability and resilience of the transportation infrastructure with a focus on an enhanced pavement engineering, design, and materials characterization framework. To this end, he has been actively working on collaborative research with several colleagues from across Canada and internationally for over the past 12 years. In 2020, Prof. Tavassoti was elected to serve a 5-year term as the vice chair of the Ontario Asphalt Expert Task Group (OAETG), where he is currently working with experts from the academia, transportation industry, government agencies, municipalities, and consultants to address some of the pressing issues affecting the quality of the pavement network in Canada.
 
At the international level, Prof. Tavassoti is an active member of the International Union of Laboratories and Experts in Construction Materials, Systems and Structures (RILEM). At RILEM, he is serving as the leader of the bituminous binders fingerprinting Task Group of the TC FBB. In this capacity, he is working with experts from over 18 different countries on utilizing advanced materials characterization techniques and Artificial Intelligence to bridge the gap between the chemo-physical properties of the bituminous mixes and their performance characteristics. Prof. Tavassoti is also the co-founder of the National Transportation Infrastructure Research Center (NTIRC) at the K.N.Toosi University of Technology, where he used to serve as the core faculty member until 2012.

She has successfully completed over 40 graduate students since starting at the University of Waterloo in 2000, many of whom are now in academic, public and private sector leadership positions. She is an author of over 400 technical publications in pavements and infrastructure, including being the principal investigator on the 2013 Transportation Association of Canada Pavement Asset Design and Management Guide and is involved in a number of national and international research projects. She has been involved with projects in Africa, India, Chile, India, China, Australia, New Zealand and throughout North America. Dr. Tighe worked for the Ministry of Transportation Ontario prior to pursuing a career in academia. During sabbaticals she has spent time in Australia working for a contractor, and has also received academic Fellowships including the Erskine Fellowship at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, the U.K. Royal Academy of Engineering at the University of Nottingham in England and the Queensland Pavement Center located at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia.