Directors

Executive Director

Mineta Transportation Institute

Karen Philbrick is the executive director of the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) at San José State University, a position she has held since 2014.

Hilary Nixon has served as Deputy Executive Director for MTI since 2018. Previously, she served as MTI’s Director of Research and Technology Transfer. Dr. Nixon is an active researcher and educator specializing in transportation and environmental planning and policy.

Dr. DingXin (Ding) Cheng is the O’Connell professor of the department of civil engineering at the California State University, Chico, director of the California Pavement Preservation (CP2) Center, and the director of the Tire Derived Aggregate Technology Center. He obtained his Ph.D. in the areas of pavement materials and transportation from Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas in 2002. He worked in private industry for Parsons Brinckerhoff in Houston, TX before joining the Chico State University.

Dr. Thomas O'Brien is the Executive Director of the Center for International Trade and Transportation (CITT) at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) and the Deputy Director of the METRANS Transportation Center, a partnership of CSULB and the University of Southern California. He also serves as the Director of the Southwest Transportation Workforce Center (SWTWC), one of five regional workforce centers originally funded by the Federal Highway Administration. He previously served as CITT’s Director of Research. Dr.

Dr. Hamid Rahai is a professor in the Departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering & Biomedical Engineering and the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Engineering at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). He has taught various classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels in the areas of fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, heat transfer, instrumentation, numerical methods, and turbulence. He has supervised over 80 M.S. theses and projects and Ph.D. dissertations and has published more than 90 technical papers.

Aly Tawfik is the Director of the Fresno State Transportation Institute and an Assistant Professor of Transportation Systems Engineering. His research interests focus on travel behavior data, surveying, modeling and simulation of human travel behavior and transportation systems.