Panos Michalopoulos’s principal fields of interest include traffic engineering, operations, simulation, control, flow theory, advanced traffic management, and intelligent transportation systems. He co-founded the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Minnesota in 1986. He has also published numerous papers in professional journals, made over 75 presentations at international conferences, and prepared research and project reports.
Michalopoulos has been a distinguished member of many professional societies and received awards from the Institute of Transportation Engineers, the Transportation Research Board, IEEE, and others for his work on traffic flow theory modeling, simulation, and control. He developed a patented machine vision process for vehicle detection and founded a company for commercializing the technology, which pioneered the field of wide-area vehicle detection and tracking through the Autoscope video sensor. Substantial royalties from this invention went to the University and the Center for Transportation Center for establishing a chair in transportation engineering and funding research projects.
Michalopoulos has also been involved in traffic management and control projects worldwide, including the Barcelona, Atlanta, Seoul, and Athens Olympic Games. He has developed traffic simulation software, state-of-the-art artificial vision-based sensors, and led numerous advanced traffic management projects for the FHWA and the Florida, New York, and Minnesota departments of transportation.