Chancellor’s Professor and ITS-Irvine Director Stephen Ritchie recently announced his intention to retire on July 1st, 2025. Under Professor Ritchie’s leadership, since 2006, ITS-Irvine has grown to become one of the major transportation research centers in the world, while also being the focal point of the highly successful interdisciplinary transportation research and education enterprise on the UCI campus.
The Institute has expanded its scope and depth during his tenure as Director. In addition to its traditional focus on civil engineering, urban planning and economics, the Institute now also attracts scholars from UCI and beyond in fields such as computer science, mechanical and aerospace engineering, law, medicine, and public health. Recent faculty hires across diverse departments have been drawn to ITS-Irvine’s reputation for supporting transportation research. Since taking over as director, 163 ITS-Irvine graduate students have completed their PhD, with 43 (26%) having obtained a faculty position after leaving the Institute and many others moving on to influential careers in industry and government. More than 200 ITS-Irvine graduate students have received a Master’s degree during this same period.
Professor Ritchie was instrumental in significantly expanding collaborations with other major national institutions. Over the past 15 years, UCI was jointly awarded two prestigious and ongoing US DOT University Transportation Centers: for the Pacific Southwest Region and the Center for Automated Vehicles Research with Multimodal Assured Navigation. He also led UCI’s collaboration with other UC colleagues to significantly increase State funding for transportation research and stakeholder engagement. This began in 2010 with leadership of the successful transportation-focused Multicampus Research Program and Initiative (MRPI) that tightened the broader UC research community’s focus on pressing transportation problems related to sustainability, equitable transportation, safety, and emerging technologies. The MRPI-fostered collaborations led directly to the establishment of the ongoing UC-wide Statewide Transportation Research Program that funds approximately $750,000 in research annually at UCI and provides a stable funding source to support administrative and outreach functions.
In total, the Institute was awarded well over $60M in extramural contracts and grants during Professor Ritchie’s Directorship—an average of over $3M per year. As a result, today ITS-Irvine has expanded research opportunities for graduate, undergraduate, and high school students and strengthened the mission of both the Institute and the University to expand the bounds of knowledge while developing a workforce that can tackle society’s most pressing problems.
After a search this spring, UCI Vice Chancellor for Research has selected Professor Jean-Daniel Saphores to succeed Professor Ritchie. Professor Saphores has been a core member of ITS for more than 18 years and brings a wide range of administrative and research experience to this role. His dual background in civil and environmental engineering (B.S. and 2 M.S. degrees) and Economics (M.A. and Ph.D degrees), as well as his experience as chair of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, provide a solid foundation of experience from which to lead ITS in its next chapter.