Francois Dion

Dr. Francois Dion is a Senior Development Engineer with 16 years of professional work experience in transportation and traffic engineering.  Throughout his career, Dr. Dion has successfully conducted practice-oriented research for Caltrans, the Michigan DOT, the Virginia DOT, and other public transportation agencies, in addition to conducting fundamental research.  Since joining PATH, Dr. Dion has been actively involved on projects seeking to improve the operation of multi-modal urban travel corridors.  He worked in the development of a pilot Integrated Corridor Management (ICM) system for a 14-mile section of the I-210 corridor north of Los Angeles to develop automated and semi-automated response procedures for addressing traffic congestion. In addition to the I-210 ICM project, Dr. Dion has also been involved in the development and evaluation of the I-15 demonstration ICM project being executed by the San Diego Association of Governments under sponsorship from the U.S. Department of Transportation. 

Prior to these efforts, Dr. Dion completed a Caltrans study assessing how traffic simulation had been used within 39 major freeway corridors in California to support the development of Corridor System Management Plan. He has also developed a Concept of Operations for a Smart Parking application for the San Diego Association of Governments, and helped small transit agencies implement their schedule and fare information in Google Transit. Through various other projects, Dr. Dion has further worked extensively on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-infrastructure (I2V and V2I) applications attempting to leverage emerging wireless communication capabilities with vehicles and travelers, on advanced traffic signal control and transit signal priority systems, as well as on traveler information systems.  Dr. Dion also has significant experience with the modeling of traffic, driver behavior, and vehicle fuel consumption and emissions. 

Prior to joining PATH, Dr. Dion worked as an Assistant Research Scientist for the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), as an Assistant Professor of Transportation Engineering for Michigan State University, and as a Research Scientist for the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI).  He holds a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Waterloo in Canada, and both a M.A.Sc. and a B.Eng. in Civil Engineering (Transportation) from the École Polytechnique in Montréal, Canada. Dr. Dion has also been holding a Professional Engineering license from the State of Michigan since 2007.