Dr. José Holguín-Veras is the William H. Hart Professor and Director of the Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment; and the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations’ Center of Excellence on Sustainable Urban Freight Systems at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He received his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering, Magna Cum Laude, from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in 1981; his M.Sc. from the Universidad Central de Venezuela in 1984; and his Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin in 1996. He has been a faculty member at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, The City College of New York (1997-2002), and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2002-present). His work has received numerous awards, including the 2013 White House Champion of Change Award for his contributions to freight transportation and disaster response research.

His research emphasizes the integration, synthesis, and projection of the knowledge that exist in multiple disciplines to produce solutions to the complex and multifaceted problems—which have proven to be too complex to be solved by single-disciplinary approaches—that impact freight transportation and humanitarian logistics. His research taps into the knowledge of social sciences to build more realistic mathematical models of humanitarian logistics, and integrate cutting edge economic principles into freight transportation modeling, so that a complete picture could be developed on the broader impacts of transportation activity on the economy and the environment; and on the most effective ways to conduct post-disaster humanitarian logistics. His research blends field research and measurements, applied and basic research to ensure that theory relates to reality; and, ultimately, to a set of actionable policy recommendations that contribute to the betterment of the economy and society.

His current research activities focus on three major areas: freight transportation demand modeling, sustainable freight policy, and humanitarian logistics. His work on freight demand modeling focuses on enhancing the realism of spatial price equilibrium (SPE) models, and development of simplified modeling techniques. His work on SPE models combines game theory, spatial price equilibrium principles, and multi-vehicle routing models, to provide estimates of commodity flows, vehicle trips, and trip chains under competitive market equilibrium.

His work on sustainable freight policy studies the interactions between the agents (e.g., shippers, carriers, receivers) involved in freight activity, to define ways to exploit these interactions to foster sustainable development and operations. This research already has led to paradigm changes in the area of freight road pricing by demonstrating theoretically and empirically that, in competitive markets, providing financial incentives to receivers willing to do off-hour deliveries is more efficient than pricing. Following the success of a $2.6 million pilot project to test this concept, the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) and the City of New York (NYC) decided to fund an implementation phase ($3.2 million), now underway.

An important third area, of profound human impact, focuses on the development of novel forms of humanitarian logistics. His research group has pioneered the multidisciplinary study of post-disaster humanitarian logistic operations. Using a holistic approach encompassing field work, quantitative characterization of operations, and basic research on analytical modeling, the group has: identified the key lessons learned from the response to the largest disasters of recent times; translated these lessons into actionable policy recommendations; shared these suggestions with disaster response agencies; and developed new paradigms of humanitarian logistic models that account for material convergence, deprivation costs, and other unique features of post-disaster operations.

His professional experience includes the analysis of the intermodal alternatives for the trans-isthmian corridor that runs parallel to the Panama Canal, and the development of numerous national and regional transportation plans in Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and other countries. He has been consultant in transportation planning, modeling, and economics for international companies and financial institutions, such as The World Bank, United Nations, Inter-American Development Bank, among many others.

To read more about his leadership positions and awards, please visit the website at: http://transp.rpi.edu/~jhvweb/index.shtml