Dr. Meera Kulkarni

Assistant Professor, Department of Civil EngineeringDeccan Institute of Technology, Pune, Maharashtra

About

I study how traffic moves on Indian roads, where cars, two-wheelers and autos share space without lanes.

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at Deccan Institute of Technology. My research looks at traffic flow in mixed, lane-less conditions: how vehicles of very different sizes and speeds interact, and what that means for signal timing, capacity and safety.

Before joining DIT, I was a postdoctoral researcher at TU Delft, working on data-driven traffic state estimation. I completed my PhD at IIT Madras, where I built one of the first large trajectory datasets of Indian urban intersections.

I teach transportation engineering and traffic flow theory, and I work with city agencies in Maharashtra on signal retiming and pedestrian safety audits.

Education

  • PhD, Civil Engineering (Transportation), IIT Madras, 2019
  • M.Tech, Transportation Systems Engineering, IIT Bombay, 2014
  • B.E., Civil Engineering, College of Engineering Pune, 2012

Awards

  • Young Researcher Award, Indian Roads Congress, 2024
  • Best Paper, Conference of Transportation Research Group of India, 2023
Portrait of Dr. Meera Kulkarni

Research

  • Traffic flow in mixed, lane-less traffic
  • Adaptive signal control
  • Pedestrian and two-wheeler safety
  • Trajectory data from drone and CCTV video
  • Connected vehicles in developing cities

Selected publications

  • Lateral gap acceptance of two-wheelers in lane-less urban traffic. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, 2026.DOI
  • A trajectory dataset of 14 signalised intersections in Pune. Scientific Data, 2025.DOI
  • Pedestrian crossing behaviour at unsignalised midblock locations in Indian cities. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 2024.DOI
  • Vehicle interactions at urban intersections without lane discipline. Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 2020.DOI

Publications

2026

  1. M. Kulkarni, S. Deshpande, R. Iyer. Lateral gap acceptance of two-wheelers in lane-less urban traffic. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies.DOI

2025

  1. S. Deshpande, M. Kulkarni. A trajectory dataset of 14 signalised intersections in Pune. Scientific Data.DOI
  2. A. Patil, M. Kulkarni. Estimating saturation flow at mixed-traffic signals from CCTV video. Transportation Research Record.DOI

2024

  1. M. Kulkarni, N. Joshi, A. Patil. Pedestrian crossing behaviour at unsignalised midblock locations in Indian cities. Accident Analysis & Prevention.DOI

2023

  1. M. Kulkarni, K. Raman. Area-occupancy based capacity estimation for heterogeneous traffic. Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems.DOI

2022

  1. L. van Dijk, M. Kulkarni, H. de Vries. Learning signal timing plans from sparse detector data. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.DOI

2021

  1. M. Kulkarni, L. van Dijk. Kalman-filter traffic state estimation with probe vehicle data. Transportmetrica B: Transport Dynamics.DOI

2020

  1. M. Kulkarni, K. Raman. Vehicle interactions at urban intersections without lane discipline. Transportation Research Part B: Methodological.DOI

2019

  1. M. Kulkarni, K. Raman. Automated extraction of vehicle trajectories from overhead video. Proceedings of the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting.

Teaching

  • CE 342Transportation Engineering, odd semester
  • CE 561Traffic Flow Theory, even semester
  • CE 598Traffic Data Analytics (lab), even semester

Prospective students

I am looking for one PhD student in 2027 to work on traffic simulation for mixed traffic. Some Python and an interest in data from video are useful; a transportation background is not required.

Contact

Email
meera.kulkarni@example.edu
Office
Room 214, Civil Engineering Block, Deccan Institute of Technology