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2026 TRB Annual Meeting: Dr. Chris Hendrickson—Recipient of the Roy W. Crum Award
Dr. Chris Hendrickson, Hamerschlag University Professor Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University, is the 2025 recipient of the Roy W. Crum Award. Named for Roy W. Crum, who served as the Board’s director from 1928 until his death in 1951, the award recognizes outstanding achievement in the field of transportation research
Hendrickson is honored for a distinguished 50-year career during which time he has authored 290 peer-reviewed publications, eight books, and ten edited volumes, with more than 20,000 citations and an h-index of 72. His four freely available online textbooks—including Project Management for Construction and Life Cycle Assessment: Quantitative Approaches for Decisions That Matter—are widely used by practitioners, students, and researchers around the world. He has taught hundreds of professionals and guided 40 doctoral students, advancing scholarship in engineering planning and management, transportation systems, construction project management, and environmental analysis.
The award will be presented on Wednesday, January 14, 2026, during the Chair’s Plenary Session of the Transportation Research Board’s (TRB) Annual Meeting, January 11–15, 2026, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.
Hendrickson’s research portfolio has transformed transportation practice and policy. His early work developed a travel-distance formula still used in home service planning and advanced models of dynamic traffic equilibrium. He pioneered probabilistic network analysis for lifeline planning after seismic events and created one of the first integrated building design systems. His leadership in green design and life-cycle analysis introduced influential methods for evaluating sustainability, including landmark work on electric-vehicle batteries. More recently, his research has shaped policy and planning for connected and automated vehicles, alternative fuel systems, and resilient infrastructure. His work consistently combines engineering rigor with management insight, producing lasting contributions to transportation systems.
Hendrickson has served TRB for nearly five decades, contributing at the highest levels of leadership and technical review. He recently completed 13 years of service on the TRB Executive Committee, six of which were as chair of the TRB Division Committee. Earlier, he chaired the Committee on Applications of Emerging Technology and served as a University Representative. His influence extends through more than a dozen National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine consensus study committees on topics such as decarbonization, interstate renewal, urban sustainability, inland waterways, defense construction, and Everglades restoration. He has also overseen reviews of dozens of TRB reports. For TRB Annual Meetings he has reviewed hundreds of papers, presented 19 times, and published 17 papers in the Transportation Research Record.
Widely respected as a leader, mentor, and advisor, Hendrickson has guided generations of students and colleagues into TRB activities, strengthening its technical committees and research base. His professional peers have recognized him with many of the field’s top honors, including election to the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Construction, the American Society of Engineers’ James Laurie Prize, the Council of University Transportation Centers’ Lifetime Achievement Award, and numerous teaching and research distinctions. Hendrickson is also director of the Traffic21 Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and editor-in-chief of the ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering.
Hendrickson earned a B.S. in General Engineering (Resources Strategy) and an M.S. in Civil Engineering from Stanford University, an M.Phil. in Economics from Oxford University, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
His humility, mentorship, and lifelong dedication to advancing transportation research make him especially deserving of TRB’s Roy W. Crum Award.
This Summary Last Modified On: 9/26/2025
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