Robert Wunderlich

"100 a Day and Rising"

Robert Wunderlich is the Director of the Center for Transportation Safety at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.  In that role, he is responsible for leading the Center’s efforts in traffic safety research, policy analysis, education, and outreach.  Over the past three years, much of his work has focused on understanding the factors associated with traffic fatalities and injuries at the state and national levels and finding ways to lower them.  He was a researcher on NCHRP 17-67, Identification of Factors Contributing to the Decline of Traffic Fatalities in the United States and led an analysis of the lives saved and return-on-investment for safety projects and programs in Texas.  He is leading TTI’s work in assisting the Texas Department of Transportation with developing and implementing the Texas Strategic Highway Safety plan.

Robert is a long-time advocate for, and practitioner of, building safety into transportation infrastructure and making operational improvements to save lives, reduce injuries and minimize crashes.  He also serves as Associate Director of the ATLAS University Transportation Center to advance transportation leadership and safety, in partnership with the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.   Mr. Wunderlich is a native of Tennessee, and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Tennessee.

He got “gone to Texas” as soon as he could and his career path has come full circle, as he started his professional work at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, but then detoured through the cities of Austin, Arlington and Garland with an interlude at a national consulting firm, before returning to TTI in 2012. Mr. Wunderlich is a licensed professional engineer in Texas and was International President of the Institute of Transportation Engineers in 2011.