Kara Kockelman is a professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering and the William J. Murray Jr. Fellow at the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. She is a registered professional engineer and holds a Ph.D., M.S., and B.S. in civil engineering, a master's degree in city planning, and a minor in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. In 2002, MIT’s Technology Review Magazine honored her as one of the world’s Top 100 Innovators under age 35, and the Council of University Transportation Centers awarded her its inaugural Young Faculty Award.

Kockelman's primary research interests include the statistical modeling of urban systems (including models of travel behavior, trade, and location choice), the economic impacts of transport policy, crash occurrence and consequences, energy and climate issues (vis-à-vis transport and land use decisions) and transport policy-making.