Chairman's Award
2026 Recipient

Download High-ResKimberly Vachal will receive the Chairman’s Award for outstanding contributions to traffic safety research and agricultural transportation. She leads traffic safety efforts at UGPTI and is director of the Institute’s Rural Transportation Safety and Security Center and Agricultural Program where she conducts research and outreach to promote a safe and competitive transportation, particularly in North Dakota and other rural areas.

Vachal has more than 25 years of experience in transportation research, primarily in agriculture, safety, program evaluation, policy, and freight flows. Her current research focuses on a globally competitive for agriculture industry and human factors in traffic safety, commercial vehicle safety, local road safety and management, and healthy community transportation. Her team has conducted the North Dakota Statewide Safety Survey for 10 years to support data-driven decisions related to behaviors including seat belt use, impaired driving, speeding and other factors. She also oversees the annual seat belt use field surveys in North Dakota and South Dakota. Data from that survey is used to develop recommendations for improving seat belt use. She has also conducted evaluations of impaired driving intervention programs and teen driver safety strategies to assess their effectiveness and help policy makers improve those efforts. She is also examining post-crash emergency medical response, distracted driving, young-driver risk, impaired driving, unpaved-road safety, and safety in rural, Tribal, and persistent-poverty communities. She has written more than 50 research papers and authored several journal articles. She also assists other research faculty with policy and economic analysis as it is relevant to their research.

Vachal has developed a broad coalition of cooperators and stakeholders including agricultural leaders, ND Department of Transportation, the ND State Patrol, county, township and city officials, Tribal representatives, law enforcement, transportation agencies. In addition, she has had the opportunity to work with students as research assistants and in teaching courses in freight logistics, microeconomics, international development economics, and traffic safety assessment.

Vachal joined UGPTI in 2002. She earned her bachelors’ and master’s degrees in agricultural economics at NDSU and her doctorate in public policy at George Mason University. Her career path has included positions with Cargill, Inc. and the Canadian Pacific Railway. She and her husband enjoy visits from their kids, Josh (Tioga) and Katarina (Fargo). They live near Valley City where they have added 70 shorthorn cattle to the family over the past decade.