Moshe Emanuel Ben-Akiva is an Israeli-American engineer who holds the Edmund K. Turner Professorship of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is noted for pioneering discrete-choice methods in travel-demand modelling and for co-creating DynaMIT,a real-time traffic-management simulation platform.[2]
Ben-Akiva moved to the United States,obtaining an SM in 1971 and a PhD in transportation systems in 1973 from MIT.[2] His doctoral research laid the foundations for the textbook Discrete Choice Analysis.[1]
Academic career
Immediately after completing his doctorate,Ben-Akiva joined the MIT faculty as an assistant professor;he was promoted to full professor in 1981 and named Edmund K. Turner Professor in 1996.[2] He founded and directs MIT’s Intelligent Transportation Systems Laboratory,whose DynaMIT software is used for real-time traffic prediction and was recognised with the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Outstanding Application Award.[3][4]
Ben-Akiva has supervised more than fifty doctoral dissertations and teaches graduate subjects in discrete-choice analysis,demand modelling and dynamic traffic assignment.[5]
Research contributions
Working at the interface of engineering and economics,Ben-Akiva introduced random-utility models that underpin modern activity-based demand forecasting. His subsequent integration of choice models with dynamic traffic assignment led to the microsimulation tools MITSIM and DynaMIT,which combine real-time sensor data with behavioural models to forecast congestion and test control strategies.[6] Since the 2010s his group has blended machine-learning techniques with discrete choice to improve forecasts for on-demand mobility and urban freight systems.[5]
Lifetime Achievement Award,International Association for Travel Behaviour Research (2006)[8]
Jules Dupuit Prize,World Conference on Transport Research Society (2007)[9]
IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society Outstanding Application Award for DynaMIT (2011)[3]
Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Award in Transportation Science,INFORMS (2017)[10]
Honorary doctorates from UniversitéLumière Lyon 2 (1992),University of the Aegean (2000),KTH Royal Institute of Technology (2008) and University of Antwerp (2010)[11]
Selected publications
Ben-Akiva,M. &Lerman,S. R. (1985). Discrete Choice Analysis:Theory and Application to Travel Demand. MIT Press.[1]
Ben-Akiva,M.,Meersman,H. &Van de Voorde,E. (eds.) Freight Transport Modelling. Emerald,2013.
Ben-Akiva,M.,McFadden,D. &Train,K. (2019). “Foundations of stated-preference elicitation.”Foundations and Trends in Econometrics,10(1-2),1–144.
References
123Ben-Akiva, Moshe; Lerman, Steven R. (1985). Discrete Choice Analysis: Theory and Application to Travel Demand. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. ISBN978-0-262-20217-0.{{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: checksum (help)
123"Moshe E. Ben-Akiva". MIT Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 11 July 2025.
12"About Moshe Ben-Akiva". Intelligent Transportation Systems Laboratory. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 11 July 2025.
↑Ben-Akiva, Moshe; Bierlaire, Michel; Koutsopoulos, Haris N.; Mishalani, Rabi G. (2002). "Real-Time Simulation of Traffic Demand–Supply Interactions within DynaMIT". In Gendreau, Michel; Marcotte, Pierre (eds.). Transportation and Network Analysis: Current Trends. Springer. pp.19–36. doi:10.1007/978-1-4615-1495-1_2 (inactive 7 August 2025).{{cite conference}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of August 2025 (link)
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