Key Officials
Dr. Richard R. John, Director Emeritus
Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, RITA/USDOT
617/494-3333 | richard.john@dot.gov
Dr. Richard John served as the Director of the U.S. Department of Transportation's Volpe Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1989–2004. He is now serving as Director Emeritus at the Volpe Center.
The Volpe Center is a unique, fee-for-service, Federal resource for facilitating product, process, and operational innovations in the transportation system. The Center supports the U.S. Department of Transportation, federal, state, and local agencies, and other organizations in the assessment, planning and deployment of innovative system and approaches for meeting critical transportation challenges. The Volpe Center has about 1500 federal and contractor employees, 300 on-going projects, and annually obligates about 200M.
Dr. John joined the Center in 1970. During the course of his career at the Center, he initiated and led the early development of the Center's current, world-class, capabilities in ground transportation and participated in early groundbreaking studies on the international competitiveness of the U.S. automobile industry. More recently he has raised awareness and became a spokes person on the importance of an educated workforce and long-term research in bring about the technological innovations necessary to meet the transportation challenge of the 21st Century.
In 2004, Dr. John became Senior Technical Advisor, Office of Traffic and Operations Management. As Senior Technical Advisor he provides his insight and knowledge to many of the critical programs under development with the Center.
His contributions to the U.S. Department of Transportation have been recognized by three Secretarial, one Presidential Rank Meritorious Executive, and one Distinguished Presidential Rank award. The later is the federal government's highest civil service award.
Prior to his government service, Dr. John was the Director of the AVCO Applied Research Laboratory in Wilmington, Massachusetts.
He received his undergraduate and graduate training at Princeton University in Engineering Physics and Aeronautical Engineering. He has published extensively in the fields of combustion, high temperature gas flows, advanced space propulsion, and most recently industrial competitiveness.
