An experienced professor is leaving Vermont to join the University of Waterloo as the new chair of the Department of Systems Design Engineering.
Lisa Aultman-Hall, who comes to Waterloo as a tenured full professor by way of the University of Vermont, the University of Kentucky and the University of Connecticut, is scheduled to assume her post as chair Aug. 1 for an initial four-year term.
She takes over from interim chair Maud Gorbet, who was thanked by Acting Engineering Dean Rick Culham in a recent announcement for doing an “incredible job” through times of change and uncertainty.
Aultman-Hall earned a PhD from McMaster University in 1996, and is currently a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vermont.
Her research focuses on transportation systems, especially methods to collect unique databases for modeling and analysis of long-distance travel, transportation sector emissions, network resiliency, streetscape design and non-motorized transportation.
Aultman-Hall’s teaching portfolio includes undergraduate courses in transportation engineering as well as first-year design, and graduate courses that, due to their interdisciplinary nature, tend to attract students from across campus.
She was the founding director of the interdisciplinary University of Vermont Transportation Research Center, and has recently served at Vermont on the executive committee of the Faculty Senate and as a member of a steering committee that created an incentive-based budget model.
Aultman-Hall is also active with the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, including chairing the National Transportation Data Committee and the 2018 National Household Transportation Survey (NHTS) Conference.