Welcoming & Keynote Remarks

Hon. Jim Beall, Former CA State Senator and Chair of the Committee on Transportation and Housing

Jim Beall served in the California State Senate from 2012 to 2020, representing California’s 15th Senate District. In 2017, Jim Beall helped pass SB 1, one of the largest infrastructure bills in the State’s history. SB 1, the Road Repair and Accountability Act, increased road safety and repair funding in the State by $5.4B annually while creating over 150,000 new jobs. During the same session, Beall passed SB 595, which provided transportation funding for regional projects in the SF Bay Area. Together, SB 1 and SB 595 financed needed improvements, including: a comprehensive Bay Area traffic relief plan; new BART cars; additional HOV lanes; Caltrain’s electrification and extension; and over $2B for the BART to San Jose extension. 

Since 2022, Jim Beall has been a member of the Santa Clara Valley Water District Board of Directors, representing District 4, which includes the City of Campbell, portions of the Willow Glen and Cambrian communities, and the North Almaden and Blossom Hill area of San Jose.

Karen Philbrick, PhD, Executive Director, Mineta Transportation Institute 

Dr. Karen Philbrick is the executive director of the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) at San José State University. Karen Philbrick leads two competitively selected multi-university consortia: the California State University Transportation Consortium (CSUTC), which unifies the surface transportation research and workforce development efforts of the 23-campus California State University system, and the Climate Change and Extreme Events Training and Research (CCEETR) Program funded by the Federal Railroad Administration. 

Prior to joining MTI, Karen Philbrick shaped the field of transportation in a variety of roles, including as assistant director of the National Center for Intermodal Transportation at the University of Denver. She has been appointed four times by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation (Secretaries LaHood, Foxx, Chao, and Buttigieg) to sit on the USDOT Transit Advisory Committee for Safety (TRACS) where she chaired the FTA Administrator’s Tasking 14-02, which identified key elements of a safety management system approach to fatigue management.

Hamid Rahai, PhD, Professor & Founding Director, Center for Energy and Environmental Research & Services (CEERS), CSU Long Beach

Dr. Hamid Rahai is the founding director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Research & Services (CEERS), COE Associate Dean for Research & Graduate Studies, and a professor in CSULB’s Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and Biomedical Engineering departments. He has supervised over 70 MS theses and projects and PhD dissertations, and authored more than 90 papers and presentations. He has overseen more than $6 million in grants and contracts from the National Science Foundation, Federal Highway Administration, California Energy Commission, California Air Resources Board, Port of Los Angeles, Caltrans, Boeing, Southern California Edison, Long Beach Airport, Long Beach Transit, and private industries.

The holder of two awarded patents in wind energy and four pending patents for drag reduction of vehicles and aircraft, vehicle emission controls, and patient-specific diagnostic systems of lung function, Hamid Rahai is a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors and the recipient of a 2004 Northrop Grumman Excellence in Teaching Award and 2014 Outstanding Engineering Educator Award from the Orange County Engineering Council.

Ganesh Raman, PhD, Associate Vice Chancellor for Research, California State University

Dr. Ganesh Raman is Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research at the California State University Office of the Chancellor. In this role, he is the senior academic official responsible for the vision, advancement and administration of CSU’s research and scholarly mission and enterprise. He is also a member of the senior administrative team of Academic and Student Affairs and leads CSU’s research enterprise that has grown by $70M to over $648M in sponsored programs—in an era of significant national decline in research funding rates. He provides leadership at an enterprise level and his sphere of influence includes Presidents, Provosts, and Chief Research Officers (CROs) at 23 campuses. He also oversees ten systemwide affinity research groups and 300+ multi-campus institutes and communicates with 100+ deans in all disciplines: STEM through the humanities.

During his 3 years at CSU, he created the first-ever systemwide CSU Strategic Plan for Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities after a 15-month consultative process that involved Presidents, Provosts, CROs and the faculty affairs committee for the Statewide Academic Senate for all 23 campuses. Major features include connecting CSU research directly to student success and faculty excellence and serving California communities. He also envisioned, created and implemented a systemwide CSU STEM network that led to a wide umbrella of CSU STEM activities with a major focus on reducing the student achievement gap in STEM disciplines and providing faculty with a multi-campus collaborative environment and a program of systemwide mentoring for proposal writing.