Ioannis Tsapakis, Ph.D.

Tsapakis, Ioannis

Assistant Research Scientist

Research and Implementation - San Antonio
Texas A&M Transportation Institute
Texas A&M University System
1100 N.W. Loop 410, Suite 400
San Antonio, TX 78213
ph. (210) 979-9411 Ext. 17117
i-tsapakis@tamu.edu

Short Biography

Dr. Ioannis Tsapakis is an Assistant Research Scientist at the San Antonio Office of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. He has participated in numerous research and consulting projects conducted in the USA, the UK and Greece, and he has published more than 30 journal articles, conference papers and technical reports. His major areas of expertise include ITS, traffic forecasting, data archiving, management and statistical modeling. Other emphasis areas include transportation operations modeling and applications of GIS/GPS in transportation engineering. Dr. Tsapakis' career experience includes major roles in various projects, such as principal analyst, database administrator, software developer, human resources manager, presenter, supervisor and author.

Since July 2012, Dr. Tsapakis has been working on an NCHRP project that deals with the optimization of the right-of-way acquisition and property management process. He is also responsible for the conduction of operational analyses and the evaluation of roadway alternatives as part of an interagency contract with a district in Texas.

Prior to joining TTI, Dr. Tsapakis worked for two years as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at University College London (UCL). Because of his contribution to the research program, UCL recently named him as an Honorary Research Associate. During his time of employment at UCL, Dr. Tsapakis had the opportunity to manage five doctoral-level students, and also participate in three research projects funded by EC & DG Research, EPSRC and U-blox. His main responsibilities involved: database administration of more than 15 different data sets using Oracle; consulting on topics related to transportation, safety and security; development of models and algorithms for the identification of different travel modes using GPS data; understanding and modeling travel behavior; conduction of surveys; participation in data collection; development of windows applications and websites; impact analysis on urban speeds in London; travel demand management tools; QA&QC of traffic data; travel time prediction developing statistical models; and organization of 2 international conferences.

Prior to joining UCL, Dr. Tsapakis worked at the Transportation Research Group of the Wayne State University, where he participated in three research projects sponsored by the Michigan DOT and the Michigan Office of Highway Safety. The projects focused on safety-belt use, roundabouts and safety in work zones. During his doctoral and post-doctoral studies at The University of Akron, Dr. Tsapakis had a major role in three research projects funded by the Ohio DOT, while concurrently providing consulting services for highway construction projects in Ohio. His main tasks included: database administrator using SQL Server; data mining and imputation; determination of seasonal adjustment factors for traffic volume prediction; assignment of short-term counts to groups of automatic traffic recorders; development of statistical models for the prediction of AADT, and; development of windows-based applications.

Over the last decade, Dr. Tsapakis has developed a strong background in using a series of software packages in the areas of: statistical and econometric analysis (SAS, JMP, SPSS, WinBUGS, Minitab), traffic analysis (Synchro, HCS), transportation modeling (CORSIM, VISSIM), database administration (SQL Server, Oracle), computer programming (Visual Basic, VBA, Fortran), and GIS (ArcGIS).

Dr. Tsapakis' professional development activities include delivering lectures at The University of Akron in the areas of: "Highway Safety", "Highway Design", "Introduction to Transportation Engineering" and "Traffic Engineering". He has been invited by several universities around the world to give lectures and seminars on transportation-related topics, while he is an active member of various professional organizations, such as TRB, ITE, ASCE, Technical Chamber of Greece and Greek Association of Civil Engineers. Lastly, Dr. Tsapakis has also received several awards such as a three-year fellowship (2006-2009) from the "Alexander S. Onasis" Institute and the awards of Anthony's D. Redikas M.D. for being an outstanding graduate student in 2008 and 2009.

Education

  • Ph.D., University of Akron.
  • B.S., University of Athens.
  • M.S., University of Athens.

Experience

  • Assistant Research Scientist, Research and Implementation - San Antonio, Texas A&M Transportation Institute, July 2012 - Present.
  • Assistant Research Scientist, Research and Implementation - San Antonio, Texas Transportation Institute, July 2012 - July 2012.

Affiliations

  • Greek Association of Civil Engineers.
  • American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).
  • Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE).