Hesham A. Rakha named Samuel Reynolds Pritchard Professor of Engineering
Hesham A. Rakha, professor of civil and environmental engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech and director of the Center for Sustainable Mobility at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, was recently named the Samuel Reynolds Pritchard Professor of Engineering by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.
The Samuel Reynolds Pritchard Professorship was established by the late Walter A. Buchanan Sr. in 1992 in honor of Prichard, who served as the dean of the College of Engineering from 1918 to 1928. The professorship recognizes excellence in engineering research.
A member of the Virginia Tech community since 1997, Rakha has received international recognition for his research on traffic flow theory, traveler and driver behavior modeling, dynamic traffic assignment, traffic control, transportation energy and environmental modeling, and transportation safety modeling.
He has published 126 peer reviewed journal articles, five book chapters, and 140 peer-reviewed conference publications that have collectively been cited more than 3,450 times. Rakha received the Best Scientific Paper Award at both the 2012 and 2013 ITS World Congress, an international event that attracts more than 20,000 participants each year.
Rakha has served as dissertation chair or co-chair to 14 Ph.D. and 33 master’s degree students, and is currently advising 11 Ph.D. and four master’s degree students as chair or co-chair.
Rakha has been involved with more than $32 million in sponsored research and has been personally responsible for $13.5 million of that total.
He is a member of the Institute of Transportation Engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Transportation Research Board. He serves on the editorial board of the Transportation Letters: The International Journal of Transportation Research, IET Intelligent Transport Systems Journal, and the International Journal of Transportation Science and Technology, and is an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions of Intelligent Transportation Systems and the Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems: Technology, Planning and Operations.
Rakha received his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering with honors from Cairo University, Egypt, and received a master’s degree and doctoral degree in civil and environmental engineering from Queen’s University, Canada.
Dedicated to its motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), Virginia Tech takes a hands-on, engaging approach to education, preparing scholars to be leaders in their fields and communities. As the commonwealth’s most comprehensive university and its leading research institution, Virginia Tech offers 240 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to more than 31,000 students and manages a research portfolio of $513 million. The university fulfills its land-grant mission of transforming knowledge to practice through technological leadership and by fueling economic growth and job creation locally, regionally, and across Virginia.
