Haris Koutsopoulos

Professor and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies,  Civil and Environmental Engineering
Affiliated Faculty,  Mechanical and Industrial Engineering

Contact

Office

  • 403 SN
  • 617.373.6263

Related Links

Research Focus

Urban transportation networks and informatics, public transportation operations, mobility on demand

Education

  • PhD, Transportation Systems, MIT, 1986
  • MS, Transportation, MIT, 1983
  • B.Sc.Eng., National Technical University of Athens, Greece, 1980

Honors & Awards

  • 2025 Faculty Research Team Award – iSUPER Impact Engine
  • August-Wihelm Scheer Visiting Professor, TUM, Technical University of Munich
  • 2016 Traffic Simulation Lifetime Achievement Award, Transportation Research Board
  • 2011 IEEE ITS Outstanding Application Award
  • 2010 IBM Smarter Planet Award

Research Overview

Urban transportation networks and informatics, public transportation operations, mobility on demand

Urban transportation networks and informatics, public transportation operations, mobility on demand

Transit Mobility Lab

With increased urbanization, providing for mobility is an issue that cities around the world are struggling to deal with. Transit is becoming an increasingly important means of addressing urban mobility issues. Professors Koutsopoulos, from the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at NEU, and Zhao and Wilson from MIT’s Transit Group, have formed the Transit Mobility Lab in order to promote innovation in public transportation.

Transit Mobility Lab

Selected Research Projects

  • Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority
    • – Principal Investigator, Boston Research Partnership
  • Transport for London Research Partnership
    • – Principal Investigator, Transport for London
  • Transit-Centric Smart Mobility for Urban Growth Centers: Improving Energy Efficiency through Machine Learning (DOE)
  • Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Academic Partnership (WMATA)

Selected Publications

  • Y. Leng, J. Zhao, H. N. Koutsopoulos, Leveraging Individual and Collective Regularity to Profile and Segment User Locations from Mobile Phone Data, ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp 1-22, 2021, doi.org/10.1145/3449042
  • P. Noursalehi, H. N. Koutsopoulos, J Zhao, Predictive decision support platform and its application in crowding prediction and passenger information generation, Transportation Research Part C, 2021, doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2021.103139
  • T. Liu, Z. Ma, H. N. Koutsopoulos, Unplanned Disruption Analysis in Urban Railway Systems Using Smart Card Data, Urban Rail Transit, 2021, doi.org/10.1007/s40864-021-00150-x
  • J. Zhou, H.N. Koutsopoulos, Virus Transmission Risk in Urban Rail Systems: A Microscopic Simulation-based Analysis of Spatio-temporal Characteristics, Transportation Research Record, 2021, doi.org/10.1177/03611981211010181
  • Y. Zhu, H. N. Koutsopoulos, N. H.M. Wilson, Passenger Itinerary Inference Model for Congested Urban Rail Networks, accepted for publication in Transportation Research C, doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2020.102896
  • P. Noursalehi, H. N. Koutsopoulos and J. Zhao, “Dynamic Origin-Destination Prediction in Urban Rail Systems: A Multi-Resolution Spatio-Temporal Deep Learning Approach,” accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, doi: 10.1109/TITS.2020.3047047
  • B. Mo, Z. Ma, H. N. Koutsopoulos, and J. Zhao, Calibrating Path Choices and Train Capacities for Urban Rail Transit Simulation Models Using Smart Card Data. Accepted for publication in the Journal of Advanced Transportation, forthcoming, doi.org/10.1155/2021/5597130
portrait of john moody

Spotlight Story

Jun 10, 2025

PhD Spotlight: John Moody, PhD’25, Civil and Environmental Engineering

John Moody, PhD’25, civil and environmental engineering, focused his research on improving the maintenance of urban rail systems, designing strategies to increase available time for maintenance activities and frameworks to quantify and act on the trade-offs between maintenance and revenue of passenger-carrying service.

PhD

Jun 10, 2025

PhD Spotlight: Joseph Rodriguez, PhD’25, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Joseph Rodriguez, PhD’25, civil and environmental engineering, conducted research funded by the Department of Energy on developing AI-based control strategies to improve transit reliability and efficiency. The proposed strategies and technologies have the potential to transform how frontline transit staff deliver service.

Faculty

Jan 30, 2025

Faculty and Staff Awards 2025

Faculty and staff were recognized at the 27th Annual College of Engineering Faculty and Staff Awards for their exceptional service and dedication in support of students, the COE community, and the university during the 2024-2025 academic year.

Faculty

Aug 16, 2024

Optimizing Urban Train Maintenance

CEE Professor Haris Koutsopoulos and PhD student John Moody, civil and environmental engineering, published a paper, “Strategies To Optimize the Deployment of Roadway Maintenance Machines for Overnight Maintenance in Urban Rail Systems,” in the Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board. The researchers developed multiple models to optimize the maintenance window of urban transit systems without disrupting passenger service.

Faculty

Dec 07, 2023

2023 Stanford University Annual Assessment of Author Citations

The following COE professors are among the top scientists worldwide selected by Stanford University representing the top 2% of the most-cited scientists with single-year impact in various disciplines. The selection is based on the top 100,000 by c-score (with and without self-citations) or a percentile rank of 2% or above.

Faculty

Apr 27, 2023

FY24 TIER 1 Research Development Award Recipients

Twelve COE faculty and affiliates were recipients of Northeastern’s FY24 TIER 1 Interdisciplinary Research Seed Grants provided by the Research Development department for 11 different projects.

Faculty

Sep 26, 2022

Impact Engines Spur Multidisciplinary Research Innovation To Solve Global Challenges

Northeastern University has selected its first cohort of Impact Engines to ignite measurable change in problem-solving, three of the five of which are led by engineering faculty.

Faculty

Dec 23, 2021

COE Professors Selected in Stanford University List of Top 2% Scientists Worldwide

The following COE professors are among the top scientists worldwide selected by Stanford University representing the top 2 percent of the most-cited scientists with single-year impact in various disciplines. The […]

Faculty

Sep 06, 2018

Creating an Optimal Sharing Economy

Professors Ozlem Ergun (MIE), Haris Koutsopoulos (CEE), and Jennie Stephens (CSSH/Affiliated CEE) were awarded a $99K NSF grant for a “Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Sharing economy – Humans, Automation, Resilience and Engineering: SHARE”.

Faculty

Mar 13, 2017

Koutsopoulos Awarded Funding for MIT-NU Transit Lab

CEE Professor Haris Koutsopoulos, in collaboration with MIT’s Transit Group, has received funding from international partner, Mass Transit Railway (Hong Kong), to study innovations in public transportation.

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