Moshe Ben-Akiva

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]

Moshe Ben-Akiva
משה בן־עקיבא
Born	Moshe Emanuel Ben-Akiva
Nationality	Israeli • American
Known for	Discrete-choice theory; DynaMIT traffic simulator
Awards	IATBR Lifetime Achievement Award (2006); Jules Dupuit Prize (2007); IEEE ITS Outstanding Application Award (2011); INFORMS Robert Herman Award (2017)
Academic background
Alma mater	Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (BS); MIT (SM, PhD)
Thesis	'Discrete-choice models of trip generation and destination choice' (1973)
Academic work
Discipline	Transportation systems analysis, econometrics
Institutions	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Notable works	Discrete Choice Analysis (1985)[1]
Website	www.its.mit.edu

Early life and education

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]

Honours

• Lifetime Achievement Award, International Association for Travel Behaviour Research (2006)^[7]
• Jules Dupuit Prize, World Conference on Transport Research Society (2007)^[8]
• IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society Outstanding Application Award for DynaMIT (2011)^[3]
• Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Award in Transportation Science, INFORMS (2017)^[9]
• Honorary doctorates from Université Lumière Lyon 2 (1992), University of the Aegean (2000), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (2008) and University of Antwerp (2010)^[10]

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.