Dr. Michael I. Darter is highly regarded in the field of civil engineering for his extensive, multifaceted roles in both the transportation and academic sectors. Spending 30 years in education as a professor of civil engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he ultimately earned emeritus status in 2003. While employed by the prestigious university, Dr. Darter published hundreds of technical publications on transportation engineering infrastructure. Likewise, he is recognized as an expert in highway and airport pavement design, construction, evaluation, maintenance and rehabilitation.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Darter served as a bridge, pavement and materials engineer at the Utah Department of Transportation from 1965 to 1970. Subsequently, he worked for the Center for Transportation Research at The University of Texas at Austin, implementing design reliability. In 1973, he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he notably developed and taught the first highway/airport pavement evaluation and rehabilitation course in the nation in 1978. Concurrently, Dr. Darter served with the U.S. Army Construction Engineering Laboratory from 1975 to 1982, where he developed the Pavement Condition Index for the United States Air Force. Impressively, the index was adopted and still used by all military branches and the Federal Aviation Administration.
In addition, Dr. Darter founded and managed ERES Consultants Inc. on a part-time basis from 1980 to 1999. In 1998, he helped in securing a contract with the national Transportation Research Board to develop an advanced mechanistic-empirical design procedure for highway pavements, which was adopted by AASHTO in 2007 and implemented by many U.S. states. ERES Consultants was subsequently acquired by Applied Research Associates Inc. in 1999, after which point, Dr. Darter served as a senior principal engineer, conducting many national research and project design builds until retiring in 2022.
Dr. Darter has traveled worldwide and presented and consulted internationally in Europe, as well as in countries such as China, Taiwan, South Africa, Australia, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Mexico and India, among others. Receiving a myriad of accolades for his work, Dr. Darter most recently received the Carlos Jofre Award from EUPave at the 14th International Symposium on Concrete Roads in Poland in 2023. Previously, he received the Hartmann-Hirschman-Egan Outstanding Achievement Award from the American Concrete Pavement Association and the Swedish Concrete Award in Stockholm, both in 2017, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Utah Department of Transportation and Utah Concrete Pavement Association in 2015, among many others.
Dr. Darter attributes much of his success to the unwavering support of his parents, children and former students. In the coming years, he aims to develop his book, “Vanished in Valor,” into a screenplay and feature-length film.
