Intermodal Chassis Provisioning and Supply Chain Efficiency: Equipment Availability, Choice, and Quality (2024)
Chapter: Appendix: Study Committee Biographical Information
Appendix
Study Committee Biographical Information
C. James Kruse (Chair) is the director of the Center for Ports & Waterways at Texas A&M Transportation Institute. In this capacity, he is responsible for identifying research and extension needs in the port and waterways communities and mobilizing resources to meet those needs. He has served two terms on the Marine Transportation System National Advisory Committee and one term as the Marine Group Chair at the Transportation Research Board where he has served multiple terms as the committee chair of the Marine Environment Committee. He served in a senior executive capacity for 9 years at the Port of Brownsville, Texas (1988–1997) including 8 years as the port director. Following his service at the Port of Brownsville, Kruse worked as a regional program manager for Foster Wheeler Environmental’s Ports, Harbors and Waterways Program and assisted on port-related projects across the United States. Kruse’s work has focused on political, environmental, financial, and operational issues related to waterborne transportation of cargo in both inland waterway and ocean environments. He has conducted studies for the U.S. Maritime Administration, National Waterways Foundation, American Waterways Operators, United Soybean Board, Port of Houston Authority, Port of Corpus Christi Authority, Corps of Engineers, and private industry. Among the topics of his research are externalities of marine transportation, marine transport of toxic inhalation hazard materials, North American marine highways, funding of waterway maintenance and infrastructure improvements, effects of lack of maintenance dredging, and waterway encroachment issues. Kruse has a master’s degree in international business and human resources from
Houston Baptist University and an MBA in accounting and finance from the University of Kansas.
Mary R. Brooks is a professor emerita at Dalhousie University’s Faculty of Management, where she was on the faculty for 34 years. Her research focused on competition policy in liner shipping, port strategic management, and short sea shipping. She has authored more than 25 books and technical reports, more than 25 book chapters, and more than 80 articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. She is a founding editor of Research in Transportation Business & Management. In 2018, she was recognized for her lifetime contribution to the maritime field with the Onassis Prize in Shipping. From 2015 to 2017, she chaired the Council of Canadian Academies’ assessment of the Value of Commercial Marine Shipping to Canada. From 2016 to 2018, she served as the chair of the Transportation Research Board’s Marine Board, and in February 2020 was appointed as a national associate of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. In 2021, she chaired the National Academies’ study Strengthening U.S. Coast Guard Oversight of Recognized Organizations: The Case of the Alternative Compliance Program; in 2021 was honored with Member, Order of Canada; and in 2022 was awarded Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal. She received her bachelor’s degree from McGill University, an MBA in international business from Dalhousie University, and a PhD in maritime studies from the University of Wales.
Rick Gabrielson is the principal and owner of RS Gabrielson and Associates, a consulting and advisory practice focused on global logistics and the transportation sector. He has extensive supply chain experience in U.S. domestic truckload, intermodal, LTL, parcel, and consolidation operations and broad experience in foreign consolidation, and trucking operations. He currently serves as an advisor to Vorto, Green Technologies, and is on the International Advisory Board for the Panama Canal.
From 2014 to 2018, Gabrielson served as the vice president of Transportation and Global Logistics for Lowe’s, where he was responsible for the management of all of the U.S. and international freight movement for the Lowe’s corporation, including all inbound and outbound domestic movement for 46 distribution centers, third-party logistics, and owned import and fulfillment facilities.
From 1998 to 2014, Gabrielson held several positions at Target Stores in both domestic and international functions. In his last role, he served as the senior director for international transportation and global logistics. While at Target, Gabrielson was responsible for developing Target’s FCA pricing model changing terms of sale, which became the model for the industry, direct overseas trucking operations in China, and five other SE/SW countries. He also received two U.S. patents for his work on developing an overseas transportation management system for Target.
He previously served on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Advisory Council for Supply Chain Competitiveness, which advises the Secretary of Commerce on practices and methods to improve the competitiveness for commerce within the United States. He is the past chair of the Coalition for Responsible Transportation, an industry-wide organization committed to environmental practices across the supply chain. He has served on the Advisory Board for the GMATS program at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point and appointed by the Secretary of Transportation to serve two terms on the Marine Transportation System National Advisory Council. Gabrielson also served on the Advisory Board for the Transpacific Stabilization Agreement. In 2011, Gabrielson was inducted into the International Maritime Hall of Fame and also received the Connie Award. Gabrielson is a graduate of Concordia University, St. Paul.
Geraldine Knatz (NAE) is a professor of the practice of policy and engineering, a joint appointment between the University of Southern California (USC) Price School of Public Policy and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, where she teaches marine transportation and environmental engineering courses and conducts research for the METRANS Transportation Center. Knatz previously served as the executive director of the Port of Los Angeles from 2006 to January 2014. She was the first woman to serve in this role and made a significant impact through the creation and implementation of the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan, an aggressive plan that reduced air emissions by combined port operations of more than 70 percent within 5 years. Prior to directing the Port of Los Angeles, Knatz served as the managing director of the Port of Long Beach. Knatz is a past president of the American Association of Port Authorities and a past president of the International Association of Ports and Harbors. Knatz has received numerous awards, including Outstanding Women in Transportation from the Journal of Commerce, 2007; Woman Executive of the Year from the Los Angeles Business Journal, 2007; Compass Award from the Women’s Leadership Exchange, 2008; an honorary PhD from the Maine Maritime Academy, 2009; the Peter Benchley Ocean Award from the Blue Frontier Campaign in 2012; and a lifetime achievement award from the Containerization Intermodal Institute in 2014. She has served on numerous National Academies’ committees, including the Marine Board. In 2014, she was named a member of the National Academy of Engineering in recognition of her international leadership in the engineering and development of environmentally clean urban seaports. Knatz serves on the board of directors for Dewberry, a privately held professional services firm headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia. Knatz earned a PhD in biological sciences and an MS in environmental engineering from USC and a BA in zoology from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey–Newark.
Francine Lafontaine is the William Davidson Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. She also holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Economics in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and in the Law School at the University of Michigan. She served as the interim dean from May 2021 to August 1, 2022, the associate dean for business + impact from July 2020 to May 2021, the senior associate dean for faculty and research from January 2016 to July 2020, and the chair of the Business Economics and Public Policy faculty from 2003 to 2012, all at the Ross School of Business. From November 2014 to December 2015, she served as the director of the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission. Lafontaine’s research focuses on inter-firm contracting, especially in terms of understanding vertical integration decisions and vertical contractual arrangements used in procurement and distribution, including transportation, and related competition or antitrust policy issues. She is a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, United Kingdom, and has served as the president of the Society of Industrial Organization and the Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics. She has held visiting positions at several universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of Florida, Université de Paris 1, Université de Rennes, and Politecnico di Milano, and has been the recipient of several awards, including an honorary doctorate from the Université de Rennes in Brittany, France. She received her PhD in economics from The University of British Columbia in Canada and an MSc in applied economics from Ecole des HEC at the Université de Montréal.
Thomas J. O’Brien is the associate dean of the College of Professional and Continuing Education at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB). Prior to that he was the executive director of the Center for International Trade and Transportation (CITT) at CSULB. He is also the associate director of Long Beach Programs for the METRANS Transportation Center, a partnership of CSULB and the University of Southern California (USC). He also serves as the director of the Southwest Transportation Workforce Center, part of the National Network for the Transportation Workforce. He previously served as CITT’s director of research. His teaching and research focus on logistics, supply chain management, and goods movement policy as well as transportation workforce development.
He is a past president of the Council of University Transportation Centers. He is the chair of the Visiting Committee of the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Supply Chain Automation and the vice chair of the Transportation Research Board’s Intermodal Freight Transport Committee and a member of the Urban Freight Committee. He also serves on the Boards of the Los Angeles Transportation Club, Harbor Association of Industry and Commerce (2nd vice president), and National Transit
Institute. He earned a master’s degree in urban planning and development and a PhD in policy, planning, and development from USC.
Amelia C. Regan is the director of the Master of Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics program at the University of Washington, Seattle. Before joining the University of Washington, she spent 25 years as a professor of computer science and transportation systems engineering at the University of California, Irvine. Earlier in her career, she was on the team that designed and built the first generation of routing and scheduling systems for UPS and was a research analyst at the Association of American Railroads. She was the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER award and a 3-year Federal Highway Administration Eisenhower Fellowship. She is the author of more than 175 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers. Her PhD students have served in academic positions in the United States, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and Canada and in many leadership positions in technology and transportation consulting and transportation technology companies. Her primary research interests are in applications of optimization and machine learning technologies to logistics and transportation systems with a special, but not exclusive interest in freight. Regan holds a BAS in systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, an MS in applied mathematics from Johns Hopkins University, and a master’s degree in civil engineering and a PhD in transportation systems engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.
Jean-Paul Rodrigue is a professor in the Department of Maritime Business Administration at Texas A&M University, Galveston. He has authored 9 books, 40 book chapters, and more than 60 peer-reviewed papers in the field of transport and logistics. His paper about port regionalization became one of the world’s most cited works in maritime transportation. His textbook, The Geography of Transport Systems, was first published in July 2006 and is now in its sixth edition; his co-authored textbook, Port Economics, Management and Policy, was published in January 2022. He is also the co-editor of the Sage Handbook of Transport Studies. He sits on the international editorial board of the Journal of Transport Geography, Transport Reviews, the Journal of Shipping and Trade, and the Cahiers Scientifiques du Transport. He is a lead member of the PortEconomics.eu initiative as well as of the International Association of Maritime Economists. Rodrigue was a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on the Future of Manufacturing (2011–2016). In 2013, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation appointed him to sit on the Advisory Board of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, a position he held until 2018. In 2019, he was the recipient of the Edward L. Ullman Award for outstanding contribution to the field of transport geography by the American Association of Geographers. In 2022, Rodrigue was appointed as a distinguished fellow at the
Hagler Institute for Advanced Study/Department of Maritime Administration, Texas A&M University. He earned a PhD in transport geography from the Université de Montréal.
Bethany M. Stich is the director of the Transportation Institute (UNOTI) at the University of New Orleans. Stich is a professor in the Department of Planning and Urban Studies where she served as the chair from 2014 to 2018. She has served as the principal investigator of UNOTI’s two University Transportation Centers, the Maritime Transportation Research & Education Center housed at the University of Arkansas and the National Center for Strategic Transportation Policies, Investments and Decisions housed at the University of Maryland. Additionally, Stich served as the principal investigator for the Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence for Maritime Resiliency housed at Louisiana State University. She has published and presented globally on issues associated with intermodal transportation as it relates to economic, business, and workforce development. Her research ranges from work on domestic chassis/supply chain management to international trade to e-navigation integration, and container-on-barge supply chain integration to liquefied natural gas development. She received a PhD in public administration and policy from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, an MPA from Kennesaw State University, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the North Georgia College and State University.
Juan C. Villa is a research scientist and program manager at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI). He has more than 40 years of experience in research, consulting, technology implementation, and engineering. For the last 23 years at TTI, he has conducted research and analyses on domestic and international supply chains and logistics; multimodal freight industry systems; analysis of factors impacting freight demand with public- and private-sector industry stakeholders; freight, logistics, and supply chain facilities capacity and throughput impacting supply; and freight data needs identification. His experience includes leading multiple projects with public-sector clients such as state departments of transportation, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Federal Highway Administration, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and Transport Canada. He is a member of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Advisory Committee on Supply Chain Competitiveness and former Chair of the Transportation Research Board’s International Trade and Transportation Committee. He earned an MS in transport studies from Cranfield University, England, and a BS in electronics and communications engineering from the Monterrey Institute of Technology, Monterrey, Mexico.
