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Born in Bucharest, Romania, Michael Horodniceanu emigrated to Israel as a teenager. There he studied at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, earning a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1970. That year, he and his wife, Bat-Sheva, moved to New York City and settled in Forest Hills, Queens.
Horodniceanu became a member of the Tandon family in 1975, when he came to the then-named Polytechnic Institute of New York to commence his doctoral studies in Transportation Planning and Engineering. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1978, he embarked upon a transportation career that included a stint as the New York City Traffic Commissioner in the Administration of Mayor Ed Koch (from 1986 to 1990).
In 2008 he took on a monumentally influential and celebrated role: President of MTA Capital Construction. In that capacity, he oversaw a long list of challenging and ambitious projects, including the completion of the first phase of the long-awaited Second Avenue Subway, the construction of the new South Ferry Station, the openings of the Fulton Transit Center, and the ambitious extension of the Number 7 line. In addition, he completed 75% of the East Side Access initiative bringing Long Island Rail Road trains to Grand Central Terminal — and he was known for taking just as much delight in giving tours of the project’s subterranean passages to schoolchildren as to top elected officials.
Soon after leaving the MTA in 2017, Horodniceanu returned to the halls of his alma mater, accepting a post as an industry professor in Tandon’s Department of Civil and Urban Engineering. He also became the chair of the newly launched IDC Innovation Hub — an organization whose mission is bringing together owners, designers, architects, contractors, civil engineers, academicians, and other stakeholders to advance the science of delivering building projects in faster, more cost-efficient, and more sustainable ways. His leadership of the Innovation Hub was a continuation of his service to the city he loved and the field in which he had made an indelible mark.
Gifts to the memorial fund will help established a fellowship that will be awarded to a promising Civil Urban engineering student.
