The paper presents the modeling and optimal control for the reduction of transverse vibration of simply supported beam under a moving mass. The equations of motion are derived by using assumed mode method. The coriolis and centripetal accelerations are accommodated in the equations of motion to account for the dynamic effect of the traveling mass. In order to reduce the transverse vibration of the beam, an optimal controller with full state feedback is designed based on the linearized equations of motion. The optimal actuator locations are determined with the evaluation of an optimal cost functional defined by the worst initial condition with the trade-off of controlled mode performance. Numerical simulations are performed with respect to various velocities and different traveling masses. Even if the velocity of the traveling mass reaches to the critical speed which can cause the resonance of the beam, the controller with two piezoelectric actuators shows the excellent performance under severe time-varying disturbances of the system.