Sangram Krishna Nirmale

Dr. Sangram Krishna Nirmale is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and an Associate Faculty member of the IIT Bombay–FedEx Centre for Advanced Logistics and Focused Analytics (ALFA). Before joining IIT Bombay, he was a Research Scientist at the Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transportation and Urban Planning (CiSTUP), Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.

His research develops econometric and statistical models of how people travel. His research group focuses on activity-based travel demand models, public transport ridership forecasting, accessibility and road safety, with ongoing work on freight and logistics. His PhD, on modelling driver behaviour in heterogeneous, lane-less traffic, gave him a grounding in discrete-continuous choice methods that now carries into our safety research.

If your work overlaps with mine and want to collaborate, write to me.

Experience

• Feb 2024 – present

  Assistant Professor

  Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Bombay, Mumbai

• Jan 2025 – present

  Associate Faculty

  IIT Bombay–FedEx Centre for Advanced Logistics and Focused Analytics (ALFA)

• Aug 2022 – Jan 2024

  Research Scientist

  Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transportation and Urban Planning (CiSTUP), IISc Bengaluru

Education

• 2016 – 2022

  Ph.D., Transportation Engineering

  Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru

  Thesis

  Multi-vehicle anticipation-based models for describing driver behaviour in heterogeneous and disorderly traffic conditions

  Advisor

  Prof. Abdul Rawoof Pinjari

• 2014 – 2016

  M.Tech., Urban Planning

  Department of Architecture and Planning, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur

  Thesis

  Transportation planning for improving workplace accessibility: A case of Kolhapur city

  Advisor

  Prof. Vidya Vinayak Ghuge

• 2010 – 2014

  B.E., Civil Engineering

  Government College of Engineering, Karad

  Project

  Suitability of autoclaved aerated concrete blocks, conventional burnt bricks and hollow blocks for economical earthquake-resistant construction

  Advisor

  Prof. Madhav Kumthekar

The models we publish are built to be used. We take on sponsored research through IIT Bombay for transport departments, transit operators, planning consultancies and companies that need rigorous, data-driven answers.

• Travel demand forecasting

  Activity-based and trip-based demand models for cities, corridors and new projects.

• Public transport ridership forecasting

  Station- and route-level ridership forecasts for bus and metro, and the effect of service changes.

• Accessibility analysis

  Access to jobs and services, and first- and last-mile connectivity around transit stations.

• Road safety analysis

  Behaviour-based analysis of risk in mixed traffic to inform safety measures.

Conference papers, full length

1. Hasan, N., Nirmale, S. K., and Pinjari, A. R. (2025). A direct demand model for metro transit ridership in Bengaluru, India. 104th Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., USA, January 2025.
2. Feroz, M. N., Nirmale, S. K., and Pinjari, A. R. (2023). Modelling mode choice behaviour with spatial variability in level of service attributes. 7th Conference of Transportation Research Group of India (CTRG-2023).
3. Nirmale, S. K., Pinjari, A. R., and Chakroborty, P. (2023). A two-dimensional, multi-vehicle anticipation, and multi-stimuli based latent class framework to model driver behaviour in heterogeneous disorderly traffic conditions. 102nd TRB Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., USA, January 2023. Also presented at the 14th TPMDC, IIT Bombay, December 2022.
4. Sharma, A., Pinjari, A. R., Sundaresan, R., and Nirmale, S. K. (2023). A human factors based modelling framework to mimic bus driver behaviour. 102nd TRB Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., USA, January 2023.
5. Nirmale, S. K., Pinjari, A. R., and Sharma, A. (2022). Modelling homogeneous and heterogeneous disordered traffic conditions using a discrete-continuous multi-vehicle anticipation based driving behaviour model. 101st TRB Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., USA, January 2022.
6. Deepa, L., Pinjari, A. R., Nirmale, S. K., Biswas, M., and Srinivasan, K. K. (2022). The adverse impact of headway variability on bus transit ridership: Evidence from Bengaluru, India. 14th Transportation Planning and Implementation Methodologies for Developing Countries (TPMDC), IIT Bombay, December 2022.
7. Nirmale, S. K., and Pinjari, A. R. (2020). Discrete-continuous choice framework to model driver behaviour in heterogeneous traffic conditions. 12th International Conference on Communication Systems and Networks (COMSNETS), Bengaluru, January 2020.
8. Nirmale, S. K., and Pinjari, A. R. (2020). Driver behaviour models with perception errors: A choice modelling framework with stochastic variables. 99th TRB Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., USA, January 2020.
9. Nirmale, S. K., Pinjari, A. R., and Munigety, C. R. (2019). A copula-based joint multinomial discrete-continuous choice framework to model driver behaviour in mixed traffic conditions. 15th World Conference on Transport Research (WCTR), IIT Bombay, Mumbai, May 2019.
10. Nirmale, S. K., and Ghuge, V. V. (2016). Developing a Public Transport Accessibility Model (PTAM) to assess workplace accessibility in Kolhapur city, Maharashtra, India. 12th TPMDC, IIT Bombay, December 2016.
11. Nirmale, S. K., and Ghuge, V. V. (2015). Introducing mechanism for improving transport infrastructure in Kolhapur city for achieving smart and sustainable development. National Conference on Sustainable Built Environment, IIT Roorkee, April 2015.

Conference papers, extended abstracts

1. Nirmale, S. K., Pinjari, A. R., and Sharma, A. (2022). On the capability of random utility maximisation theory-based driver behaviour models of heterogeneous disordered traffic to reproduce the fundamental macroscopic properties of traffic flow. Traffic and Granular Flow (TGF), IIT Delhi, October 2022.
2. Sharma, A., Pinjari, A. R., Sundaresan, R., and Nirmale, S. K. (2022). A human factors based modelling framework to mimic bus driver behaviour. Traffic and Granular Flow (TGF), IIT Delhi, October 2022.
3. Nirmale, S. K., and Pinjari, A. R. (2019). Multi-stimuli driver behaviour models with perception errors: An integrated latent variable and discrete-continuous framework with empirical applications to heterogeneous and homogeneous traffic conditions. 6th International Choice Modelling Conference, Kobe, Japan, August 2019.
4. Nirmale, S. K., and Pinjari, A. R. (2018). Influence zone, multi-stimuli, and two-dimensional (IZMS-2D) driving behaviour in heterogeneous traffic conditions: An econometric framework and exploratory analysis of driving behaviours in India. 15th International Conference on Travel Behaviour Research (IATBR), Santa Barbara, California, USA, July 2018.