Dr. Benekohal is a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He obtained his Bachelors, Masters, and PhD Degrees in Civil Engineering from the Ohio State University. From 1986 to 1987, he worked for the consultant company of RKA in Tarrytown, NY as a Transportation Engineer. Then, he joined the University of Illinois in 1987 as an Assistant Professor. From 1987-1992 as an Assistant Professor, and from 2000-present he has been full Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Professor Benekohal has a proven record of conducting research on many aspects of traffic including, capacity, speed, safety, traffic control devices and techniques, bottlenecks traffic operation, traffic simulation among others. Dr. Benekohal has been working on traffic operation and safety for 25 years. He has over 300 publications in traffic operation and safety areas He has successfully served as principal investigator of several state and federal research projects in work zone traffic operation and safety. These projects have resulted in better understanding and more effective work zones traffic management.
Dr. Benekohal is nationally recognized as the leading researcher in highway traffic operation. He is a former member of the TRB Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics, Traffic Control Devices, Highway Capacity and Quality of Services committees. He is currently a member of TRB committee on Traffic Control in Work Zones. HC&QS sub-Committee on signals . He is the past Chair of Traffic Operations Committee of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and served as a member of Transportation Safety Council Committee 4S-4 (Statistical Evaluation in Traffic Safety Studies) of the Institute of Transportation Engineers, among many others.
Dr. Benekohal is the Director of the Annual Illinois Traffic Engineering and Safety Conference that addresses traffic operations and safety. He was Chair of an ASCE international conference on Traffic Congestion and Traffic Safety in the 21st Century that was held in 1997. Dr. Benekohal is also Director of Traffic Operations Lab (TOL) at the University of Illinois, and was Co-Director of NEXTRANS, USDOT Region 5 University Transportation Center. He was awarded Arthur Wellington Award of ASCE for the most outstanding paper in the Transportation.
Dr Benekohal was a Guest Professor of Civil Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, China, 2006-2009, and an Honorary Professor of Traffic Eng., Harbin Univ. of Civil Eng. and Architecture, Sept 1996-2001. He is winner of Arthur M. Wellington Prize for the best paper in Transportation or Foundations, ASCE, 1993. He was awarded a three-week trip to China by the Heilongjiang (China) Province, May 1996.