Dr. Buttlar is a Professor and holds the title of Narbey Khachaturian Endowed Faculty Scholar in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He is also the founder and director of Online and Blended Programs in CEE at UIUC, and has been the director of the historic (100 years strong) Transportation and Highway Engineering Conference (THE) since 2001.  He also holds a half-time appointment as Associate Dean for Graduate and Professional Programs in the College of Engineering at UIUC, where he oversees Online, Graduate, and Professional programs in the College of Engineering.  He also serves on the campus MOOC Review Committee (which oversees Coursera RFP process – Provost appointed), the campus MOOC/Online Strategy Advisory Committee (Provost/Chancellor appointed), serves on the UI Labs Working Group (VCR appointed), and is Chair of the Upcoming National Symposium, “Envisioning the Future of Online Graduate Education at the 21st Century Research University.” He is also a member of the campus committee for the UILabs initiative in Chicago, and is the faculty lead on the development of a new center within UILabs driven to make Chicago one of the smartest cities on the planet.

He has over 180 publications in the area of sustainable and smart infrastructure, asphalt materials and pavements and over 40 invited presentations and keynote lectures.  He serves as an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Road Materials and Pavement Design, and was recently elected as a Director at Large of the Association of Asphalt Paving Technologists and was recently nominated to serve on the Penn State College of Engineering Industrial and Professional Advisory Council.  He is the chair of the RILEM TC-MCD Committee, Mechanisms of Cracking and Damage in Asphalt and Composite Pavements.

His research specializes in the areas of smart and sustainable urban infrastructure, asphalt materials, performance-related testing, pavement modeling and mechanics, and online education.   Dr. Buttlar’s research portfolio includes support from the Illinois Department of Transportation, the National Science Foundation, the National Cooperative Highway Research Program, the Federal Aviation Administration, the O’Hare Modernization Project, and industry.  He is a co-inventor of the AASHTO T-322 Indirect Tensile Test for Asphalt Concrete and the ASTM D7313 Disk-Shaped Compact Tension Test for Determining the Fracture Energy of Asphalt Concrete, and his group recently developed the national thermal cracking code “ILLI-TC” and an acoustic emission based asphalt embrittlement analyzer test and device.  Recent work has led to the development and validation of a smartphone based system to conduct roughness evaluation of pavements using standard metrics such as International Roughness Index (IRI).  His research has also led to the quantification of user costs associated with travel on rough pavements, including sustainability considerations (life cycle assessment).  A 50-to-1 return on investment was suggested by the research when rough roads are resurfaced to restore smoothness.

Dr. Buttlar teaches undergraduate and graduate coursework in the areas of Transportation Engineering, Asphalt Materials and Mix Design, and Advanced Topics in Asphalt Materials.  Dr. Buttlar is a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Illinois.  He earned his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Penn State University in the area of Pavements and Materials in 1996.