Haitham Al-Deek

Dissertation: The Role of Advanced Traveler Information Systems in Incident Management

Advisor: Adib Kanafani

PhD Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1991

MS Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1987

BS Civil Engineering, Kuwait University, 1985

University of Central Florida - Present

Haitham Al-Deek is an international expert with more than 32 years of experience in transportation engineering, planning and operations. He is nationally recognized in the fields of freeway operations and intelligent transportation systems. He is also well known for his contributions to the field of wrong way driving with various ITS countermeasures. He is currently working on utilizing connected vehicles to stop wrong-way drivers. He received numerous awards from the national US Research Council Transportation Research Board. In 2018 and 2012, he received the TRB’s Chairman Award in recognition of his meritorious service, leadership, and substantial contributions to the field of freeway operations as the chair of the paper review subcommittee of the TRB Freeway Operations Committee (ACP20). He also received two certificates of appreciation from the TRB Regional Transportation Systems Management and Operations (Regional TSM&O) Committee in 2018 and 2012 (ACP10). He received the best TRB paper awards in freeway operations for the years 2023, 2022, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2015, 2009, and 2003. His students won the best TRB student paper award in freeway operations for 2022, 2019, 2018, and 2017 years. He also received the best TRB paper award in Regional Transportation Management and Operations in 2023, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2013. Professor Al-Deek had numerous media interviews on wrong-way driving, e.g., Channel 6 CBS News in 2022, FOX NOW 19 news in 2016, and Channel 9 news in 2015 and 2014 featuring the innovative wrong-way driving countermeasure he and his research team came up with in partnership with Central Florida Expressway Authority (CFX), which was later implemented for the first time in North America. He has three U.S. patents, two registered marks, and eight copyrights. He was featured as a distinguished researcher by the UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science in 2003.

After earning his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in civil engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991 and 1987 respectively, Al-Deek joined the University of Central Florida in 1992. Since then, he has supervised 15 Ph.D. dissertations and 29 M.S. theses to completion. He was the faculty advisor of the Institute of Transportation Engineers student chapter at UCF from 1993 to 2019. He won the UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science Excellence in Research at Professor Level award in April 2018 and won the UCF Research Incentive Award twice in 2018 and in 2001. He won the UCF Researcher of the 1999 Year Campus Wide Award. He has won the Teaching Incentive Program awards at UCF five times in addition to several other teaching awards.

Al-Deek has attracted $10.3 million dollars of research funding with over 79 applied research projects throughout his career. He has more than 404 peer reviewed publications and presentations, and close to 4,322 Google Scholar citations h-index is 32 as of December 2023. His primary areas of research are: wrong way driving and countermeasures, connected and automated vehicles, intelligent transportation systems and traffic information systems, electronic toll collection and traffic management systems, freight transportation and clean energy. He has done multidisciplinary research in many other areas such as traffic safety, including developing new methods for safety performance functions and identifying high risk safety corridors, driver simulators and man-in-the loop, modeling of the impact of traffic congestion on air quality and sustainable transportation.