Professor John Preston BA, PhD, FCIHT.
Professor of Rail Transport

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John Preston is Professor of Rail Transport within Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton.
Professor Preston has just completed a term of office as Head of the Transportation Research Group (2015-20). He was previously Head of the Civil, Maritime and Environmental Engineering and Science Academic Unit (2011-2014), Director of the Transportation Research Group (2008-10) and Head of the School of Civil Engineering and the Environment (2010-11). He has almost 40 years of experience in transport teaching and research, having previously held posts at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford. His research in transport covers demand and capacity modelling, regulatory studies, economic appraisal and land-use and environment interactions. His initial work concentrated on rail but subsequent work has covered all the major modes of transport. He has held almost 160 research grants and contracts, worth over £22 million, and has published around 370 articles, book chapters, conference and working papers. He has successfully supervised over 30 doctoral students.
His current work at Southampton includes leadership of the Solent Future Transport Zone project and of the University’s contribution to the Centre for Sustainable Travel Choices. He is also providing transport expertise to the EPSRC Achilles, Decarbonising Transport through Electrification, Track to the Future and MISTRAL projects. He also leads the Faculty’s Centre of Excellence of Re-engineering for Electric Mobility (RE4EM). He previously led the iConnect consortium that undertook an evaluation of engineering interventions to promote walking and cycling, the OCCASION and DITTO projects on rail operations and contributed to the Track21 and Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium Programme Grants.

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