Neil Pedersen

Neil Pedersen recently retired as Executive Director of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, a position that he served in from 2015 to 2022. In that role, he provided strategic direction and oversight for TRB’s technical activities, including its annual meeting, which attracts 14,000 attendees; its 177 standing technical committees; its conferences and workshops; its webinar program, its library services; and its bibliographic database with over 1.4 million entries. He also provided executive leadership for TRB’s multi-modal cooperative research programs and its advisory services to the federal government.

Prior to joining TRB, Mr. Pedersen served in leadership positions for the Maryland Department of Transportation for 29 years, the last eight years as State Highway Administrator and Governor’s Highway Safety Representative. While at Maryland DOT, he served in a number of volunteer leadership positions for both TRB and for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, including as Chair of the TRB Executive Committee in 2011.