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Nebraska Transportation Center

Laurence Rilett

Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering, Keith W. Klaasmeyer Chair in Engineering and Technology, Mid-America Transportation Center

Laurence Rilett

Contact:

121B Nebraska Hall
Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0530
(402)472-1992
lrilett2@unl.edu

Education:

  • Ph.D. Candidate for Civil Engineering, Successfully completed coursework and passed Qualifying Exam., Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
  • Doctor of Philosophy in Civil Engineering, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario
  • M.S. Civil Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
  • Honors B.S., Civil Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario
    • Five-year cooperative program -- 8 school terms; 6 work terms

Experience:

  • Dr. Laurence R. Rilett is a Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering and the inaugural holder of the Keith W. Klaasmeyer Chair in Engineering and Technology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He also serves as the Director of the UNL Mid-America Transportation Center.
  • Dr. Rilett received his B.A.Sc. degree and his M.A.Sc. degree from the University of Waterloo and his Ph.D. degree from Queen's University. He has held academic positions as an Assistant Professor and an Associate Professor (1995) at the University of Alberta and as an Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor at Texas A&M University (TAMU). Additionally, he is a Professional Engineer in the state of Texas. Over the past twelve years he has taught seven different undergraduate courses and four different graduate courses in statistics, risk analysis, and transportation planning. He has been awarded two TAMU Department of Civil Engineering teaching awards: the Zachry Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1997 and the Dick and Joyce Birdwell Endowed Teaching Award for 1999. In 2001 he was honored as the inaugural holder of the E.B. Snead II Professorship at TAMU.
  • Dr. Rilett has been a principal investigator or co-principal investigator on over 20 research projects. Dr. Rilett's field of research is in the transportation system analysis area and his specific research may be divided into two main areas: Intelligent Transportation Systems applications and large-scale transportation system modeling. He has authored or co-authored over 50 refereed journal papers and over 70 conference papers based on his research. In 2002 he was awarded the Texas Transportation Institute TTI/Trinity Researcher Award. Dr. Rilett is an Associate Editor of the ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering and on the editorial board of the Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems: Technology, Planning, and Operations.