He holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Transportation from Rutgers University and a B.S.C.E. from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He is the chair of the Standing Committee on Ports and Channels of the Transportation Research Board (TRB), National Academies of Science (NAS); the Associate Director for Research of the Intermodal Freight Transportation Institute and the co-Director of the Biologistics Cluster, FexEx Institute of Technology at the University of Memphis, and the Associate Director of the Freight Mobility Research Institute at Florida Atlantic University. His teaching and research covers the areas of maritime and freight transportation; physical network vulnerability; capital/operational resource allocation for network improvements; and multi-level multi-criteria decision making.