Bryan Katz joined the Virginia Tech faculty in 2007 and is currently an Associate Professor of Practice in the department. He is also the President of toXcel, LLC, which provides engineering, behavioral sciences, and life sciences services to private industry and the public sector. They provide services in various areas including traffic safety, traffic operations, human factors, and data sciences to support the transportation industry as well as exposure assessment, risk assessment, toxicology evaluation, and regulatory support for the environmental and life sciences industry.  

Katz is a three time alumnus of the Charles E. Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He has received the Excellence in Transportation Engineering Education Award by the Southern District of the Institute of Transportation Engineers, the Eugene D. Arnold, Jr. Outstanding Individual Activity Award by the Virginia Section of the Institute of Transportation Engineers, the Virginia Tech Civil and Environmental Engineering Alumni Teaching Excellence Award, a Certificate of Teaching Excellence at Virginia Tech, a Favorite Faculty Award through Virginia Tech’s Office of Residence Life, and an Outstanding Young Alumni Award in the CEE department. He was recently promoted to the rank of Fellow with the Institute of Transportation Engineers.

He has over 20 years of professional experience as a practicing Transportation Engineer and is well known as one of the nation’s most respected researchers in traffic control devices. He has served as the Principal Investigator or Project Manager on over 60 projects totaling over $30 million in funding, primarily through Federal and State Department of Transportation research projects. On top of his professional accomplishments as a practicing engineer, he has also had a profound impact on the Virginia Tech College of Engineering’s efforts toward providing a high quality online teaching experience. He was the first professor in the civil and environmental engineering department to offer an online course.

Katz primarily teaches undergraduate students in Introduction to Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE 2804), Professional and Legal Issues in Civil Engineering (CEE 4804) and other transportation engineering classes. His passion for teaching is contagious to his students. He is known for his enjoyable class lectures and outgoing personality. His areas of interest include traffic engineering, transportation safety and operations, and traffic control devices. One student noted that he is “very nice and outgoing, but also knowledgeable” which makes it easy to learn from him.

Alumna Erin Littleton Filler (B.S. ‘12, M.S. ’13) added that “Dr. Katz cares more about his students than anyone I know, and he makes learning fun. He goes out of his way to help students with their academics and future careers.”

Katz has served as the Virginia Tech ITE Student Chapter Faculty Advisor for many years. During that time, he has led the Traffic Bowl team to yearly appearances at the Southern District Traffic Bowl Competition.

“I am so honored to receive this award. I was a student of Dr. Loganathan’s and I have always tried to model my teaching style after his beause he was such a great educator who had a talent for providing an environment for students to succeed,” said Bryan Katz. “He was very well respected by his students because of his passion for teaching. Receiving this award is the most meaningful honor of my career.”

The G.V. Loganathan award is determined by a poll of current CEE students who feel that faculty affected their education in a positive way through teaching, research, advising, involvement with student organization or in other ways. The award was formerly known as the CEE Faculty Achievement Award, but the name was changed with unanimous support from the department in memory of Dr. G.V. Loganathan who received the award five times during his tenure at Virginia Tech.