Yoram Shiftan

Yoram Shiftan (born: 1958; Hebrew: יורם שיפטן) is a Professor in the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, where he holds the Joseph Meyerhoff Chair in Urban and Regional Planning.
Shiftan’s research focuses on travel behavior and transportation system analysis. He is the head of the Israeli Smart Transportation Research Center and a consultant to major strategic transportation projects in Israel and abroad.
==Early life and education==
Yoram Shiftan was born in Jerusalem, Israel, and studied at Leyada, the Hebrew University high school. He studied civil engineering at the Technion and earned a B.Sc. (cum laude) in 1986. He continued his studies at the Technion and received his M.Sc. in civil engineering in 1988. He earned his Ph.D. in 1991 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with the thesis “Transportation Workforce Planning in the Transit Industry: Incorporating Absence, Overtime, and Reliability Relationships” under the supervision of Prof. Nigel Wilson.
==Academic career==
In 1991 Shiftan started working at Cambridge Systematics Inc, a transportation consultancy firm in the US, and became a senior associate. He then joined Technion’s civil engineering faculty in 1996 as a lecturer. He became a senior lecturer in 1999. Shiftan was promoted to associate professor in 2005 and to full professor in 2016. From 2019 he holds the Joseph Meyerhoff Chair in Urban and Regional Planning in the faculty.
During his career, Shiftan was a visiting professor at the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.; the University of IL Chicago; Ohio State University; the Institute for Transport Planning and Systems (IVT), ETH, Zurich; Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan; and School of Public Policy, George Mason University, Arlington, VA. and taught courses on demand modeling and transport project evaluation. Shiftan has supervised 20 Ph.D. and 50 M.Sc. students.
==Research==
His Shiftan’s research focuses on travel behavior and demand and their implications for policy and investment decision-making. He develops models to predict, plan and analyze the demand for travel, using theories in economics, psychology, and engineering. The models analyze transportation systems to improve efficiency and equity and examine their economic, environmental, social, and safety impacts. 
He developed the Activity-Based Models (ABM). Instead of just forecasting the trips people will undertake, it estimates the activities they will perform, and derives from that the trips they'll take to execute them. These models significantly increase the understanding of travel behavior and provide better tools for transportation planning. Shiftan developed the methods for implementing these models and designed the Tel Aviv AMB. 
==Professional activities==
Shiftan has been a consultant on major transportation projects in the US and Israel on travel demand, transport policy, and environmental impact. Among others, he developed the travel demand models for the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Area as well as the Second Avenue Subway in New York. In Israel, he was the academic advisor for the Israeli guide for Transport Project Evaluation and advised on the demand models, planning, and cost benefits of major investments. These include the Tel-Aviv Metro System, the Israel Railways Strategic Plan, and the Jerusalem Light Rail. His clients include the Israel Ministry of Transport and the Israel Ministry of Finance, the United States Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration, and several states and major metropolitan areas in the US.
==Publications==
Shiftan has authored some 150 articles and edited five books.
==Personal life==
Shiftan is married to Alona Nitzan-Shiftan. They have two children and live in Haifa.
Category:1958 births
Category:People from Jerusalem
Category:Israeli people
Category:Professors