News>>longtime ITS associate edward sullivan dies

Edward Sullivan, a UC Berkeley transportation engineering PhD ('71) whose association with ITS dates back four decades and included a stint as Assistant Director, died last month from complications related to cancer. He was 64. Sullivan also worked at ITS as a post-doctoral researcher and a contributor to the ITS textbook, The Fundamentals of Traffic Engineering.

At the time of his death, Sullivan was Associate Dean of Engineering for Research and Graduate Programs at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he had been a member of the Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty since 1989. In his teaching, he focused on traffic analysis and modeling, evaluation methods and traffic collision modeling. He also published numerous papers in those fields.

"Ed was one of the builders of the modern ITS," recalled Adib Kanafani, Cahill Professor of Civil Engineering, and ITS Director from 1983 to 1998. Kanafani, who joined the faculty in 1970, served on Sullivan's dissertation committee.

Kanafani noted that Sullivan arrived at Berkeley as the Institute was making the transition from the Institute of Traffic and Transportation Engineering (ITTE), located at the Richmond Field Station, to a closer association with the Berkeley campus, where ITS moved into its current home in 1972.

Sullivan's work concerned modeling for "sparse" networks, Kanafani explained, and involved research on U.S. Forest Service land. He and Sullivan worked on a major research project in the national forests for three summers, devising ways to model and better understand the impacts of various types of traffic, including "resource traffic" (such as logging and mining equipment) and off-road and other tourist vehicles.

Because of his experience with computers as an undergraduate at MIT, Sullivan was "a little more computer savvy," Kanafani recalled. As computing moved from ungainly mainframes to desktop pcs, "Ed was asked to computerize ITS's research and business computing." Sullivan created the Systems Unit, ITS's in-house computing resource that remains an important component to this day.

Sullivan also took on the Assistant Directorship for a period, "but he was more of a researcher," Kanafani said. Sullivan teamed with Kanafani and others to establish graduate transportation programs in Costa Rica and Venezuela and was also active in teaching in the Berkeley transportation program. "He was very generous with his time. He was a really good faculty member."

When Cal Poly offered him a faculty position in 1989, he accepted, joining an engineering faculty that was made up of many Berkeley grads, Kanafani noted. Sullivan continued to co-author research reports with his Berkeley colleagues, in addition to contributing to The Fundamentals of Traffic Engineering.

Former ITS Assistant Director, Researcher Emeritus and lead author of the Fundamentals Wolf Homburger recalled: "Long after moving to Cal Poly, Ed continued to share his expertise with ITS Berkeley. As recently as 2006, he (for the second time) co-authored an edition, contributing chapters on transportation planning, traffic management and environmental impact studies."

Professor Emeritus William Garrison, who preceded Kanafani as ITS Director, noted, "Ed was a helpful, gentle person, more than willing to provide reviews, mentor students and provide constructive comments. He made the lives of those in the Institute better."

Added Kanafani: "He was really a colleague in the full sense of the word."

As recently as 2008, Sullivan was a co-author on a research paper at ITS. There are 23 titles that show him as a co-author in the ITS publications database.

Links to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo stories about Ed Sullivan.