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About Us |
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Dr. Michael Knodler,
Jr., Director/Principal Investigator
Dr. Michael Knodler is an Associate Professor in the Transportation Engineering Program in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In addition, he is a Principal Investigator with UMassSAFE and Associate Director of the Human Performance Laboratory. His main areas of research are related to traffic safety, operations, design, and education. He recently completed work on several comprehensive projects related to protected/permissive left-turn signal control funded by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program. The projects included operational and human factors focuses with both field and laboratory studies, including the development of driving simulator scenarios for the fixed-base mid level driving simulator in the UMass Human Performance Laboratory. Dr. Knodler developed and teaches a course on Advanced Concepts in Transportation Safety among other engineering related courses. Dr. Knodler is also working on current projects that incorporate driver eye behavior in a simulator versus real world environments for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the New England Transportation Consortium. He has been involved in several safety related projects, including the statewide safety belt usage study for Massachusetts, a pedestrian crossing behavior study, and speed related crash analyses. Dr. Knodler also serves as Advisor for the Institute of Transportation Engineers UMass Student Chapter.
Robin Riessman, MPH ,
Associate Director
Robin holds a master’s degree in public health and has worked in the field of highway safety for over 17 years in areas such as traffic records, data collection and analysis, community level programming, and grants writing and management. She was instrumental in creating the UMassSAFE project and has worked here since its inception in 2001. Robin’s areas of interest lie in traffic records, improving data quality, and assisting highway safety players in translating data and research results into practical information to be used to implement programs to save lives. She enjoys the truly collaborative nature of highway safety that allows her to work with professionals from many fields – engineering, public health, enforcement, etc – facilitating processes that combine the unique individual skills and knowledge into a cohesive effort to reduce the impact of crashes. Robin coordinated and facilitated the statewide Massachusetts Traffic Records Coordinating Committee (TRCC) for 3 years. Before holding the position of Associate Director for UMassSAFE she was the Director of the Northampton Savings Lives Program (NSLP), a nationally recognized community traffic safety program which brought together players from many arenas to strategize programming, build consensus, and write and implement a citywide safety plan. After the NSLP ended, Robin developed countywide community traffic safety programs and subsequently managed all such programs for the Commonwealth. She then held the position of Traffic Records Coordinator for the GHSB. In that capacity she assisted in the development and implementation of statewide strategic plans.
Jennifer Kennedy, Researcher
Jenn began working at UMassSafe as a student research assistant, early in her undergraduate program, in 2005. She has since transitioned into a full time researcher within the Traffic Safety Research Program. Jenn is interested in applying multiple types of analysis to transportation safety data with hope of identifying unique findings and conveying the results to varied audiences.
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© 2006