Biography

Shashi Nambisan heads UNLV's Transportation Research Center, an interdisciplinary educational and outreach hub housed within the College of Engineering where Nambisan has also served as a civil engineering professor for nearly two decades. His research interests include transportation safety and risk analysis, data analytics and data-enabled decision support tools, transportation planning and infrastructure management, emerging technologies, and air transportation.

With over 30 years of experience in developing research enterprises, Nambisan has led efforts on more than 170 projects, grants, and gifts to develop innovative, technology-based strategies that enhance transportation safety, capacity, and travel time reliability. His projects have been funded by various federal, state, and local agencies, the private sector, and not-for-profit organizations. Federal sponsors include the U.S. Departments of Transportation and Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2018 and 2020, he led efforts to develop two large nationally competitive proposals funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Transportation and Congestion Management Technologies Deployment program to address a broad range of topics such as safety, data analytics, and policy support.

Nambisan strives to partner with public and private-sector leaders, advocacy groups, professional organizations, and other stakeholders on identifying transportation and infrastructure challenges and needs, and developing potential solutions for the same. For example, his scientific and technical work formed the basis for several local, regional, and national policies and practices such as alternatives for infrastructure development, guidelines and standards for transportation system design and operations, and risk mitigation for hazardous materials routing. He was recently appointed to the Nevada Advisory Committee on Traffic Safety, and in 2019 he spearheaded a study that prompted Alabama lawmakers to pass a funding package that will generate about $320 million in revenues annually for transportation investments. 

Nambisan's services have been recognized by former Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, who proclaimed January 31, 2007, as Professor Shashi Nambisan Day. Nambisan was also awarded the Harry Reid Silver State Research award in 2005. Students he advised and mentored serve in professional leadership roles across the U.S. and internationally