Education
Graduate Education Highlights
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Salvador Hernández Named Student of the Year
Salvador H. Hernández was recently named the NEXTRANS Center's 2008 Student of the Year. Salvador received his award, along with a cash prize, at the 18th Annual Outstanding Student of the Year Awards, held during the 2009 Transportation Research Board's Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Salvador's research involves developing collaborative LTL carrier-carrier operational paradigms that take advantage of operational synergies amongst small-to-medium sized carriers to increase capacity utilization. He also seeks to identify the potential factors that will lead to a successful collaborative effort.
In addition to research, Salvador actively mentors undergraduates for both the transportation center and the Minority Engineering Program (MEP) at Purdue University. He mentored NEXTRANS' first intern, Jim Caraher, a National Merit Scholar who has chosen to continue his internship at the Center as an undergraduate student. Together they are disseminating surveys that will be used to develop new operational models for capacity utilization in the freight-carrier industry. Salvador was awarded the Gerald I. Gilbert Memorial Scholarship and a fellowship for talented minority students. He has served in leadership positions for the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), and the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE). He is an active member of Chi-Epsilon, the National Civil Engineering Honor Society.
In recognition of his strong leadership skills, professional achievements, and determination to excel in the field of freight-transportation systems and logistics, NEXTRANS University Transportation Center is proud to nominate Salvador H. Hernandez as its 2008 Student of the Year.
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PPP Workshop Bridges Gap Between Classroom and Real World
On December 2, 2008, the NEXTRANS Center hosted a workshop that allowed students to analyze a toll road project from the perspective of private-sector investors. The workshop, titled “XYZ Express Toll Route: A PPP (Private Toll Road Concession) Practical Case Study,” was presented by Fidel Saenz de Ormijana and Ricardo Sanchez of Ferrovial Group. It was attended by approximately forty Purdue students and faculty members, in addition to other representatives of Ferrovial Group. For the exercise, Saenz and Sanchez asked students to examine a hypothetical toll road project called the XYZ Express Toll Route, which the state DOT is planning to develop as an alternative route to a congested freeway. The project is to be completed through a standard public-private partnership (PPP), in which a private company (concessionaire) will design, build, finance, and operate the road, recovering their investment via tolls. Student participants were then called in as “experts” by potential private-sector investors, in order to analyze the financial feasibility of the project.
The workshop generated a number of questions from students and professors, including NEXTRANS faculty members Professor Kumares Sinha and Professor Samuel Labi. This discussion focused a great deal on estimating user demand, and the variables that can arise in the real world over the span of decades. All in all, the workshop presented a strong experiential learning opportunity for students, who were asked to leave the classroom mentally in order to examine these real-world variables, and make their own calculations and evaluations based on the presented data. This will help prepare them for when they enter the transportation workforce, and are presented with complex, field-based problems that lack controlling parameters.
Click here to read the full article in the NEXTRANSporter Volume 2, Issue 1
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OSU Faculty Engage Students at OTEC 2008
How do University Transportation Centers affect my education? What advice would transportation professionals give me as a student pursuing a career in the industry? NEXTRANS faculty members from The Ohio State University attempted to answer these questions for students attending the 62nd Annual Ohio Transportation and Engineering Conference (OTEC), which was held in Columbus on October 28 – 29, 2008. Sponsored by the Ohio Department of Transportation and The Ohio State University (OSU), the conference focused on the 2008 Theme: “The Power of Multi-modal Transportation: Linking Ohio to the World on All Fronts.” NEXTRANS faculty members from OSU actively engaged students at this year’s conference to inform them on UTC activities and opportunities, and help them transition into transportation careers. Faculty also shared research projects co-sponsored by NEXTRANS with attendees at large.
Professor Mark McCord organized two panel sessions geared toward students attending the conference. Approximately 80 participants attended the first session, titled “University Transportation Centers in Ohio: What They Mean for Transporta-tion Education and Practice.” OSU Professor and NEXTRANS Center Co-Director Rabi Mishalani served as a panelist during this session. Representatives discussed the work that is being conducted at their centers, and how this work is expected to impact transportation education and practice. The general consensus amongst the panelists was that the primary impact is presently occurring through the participation of students on research projects that otherwise would not be undertaken. In addition, efforts are underway to impact education by designing class modules around results being produced in UTC projects, and also by exposing high school teachers to the centers and the prob-lems being addressed. Professor McCord moderated the second session, which was titled “The Transportation Profession: Observations and Tips for Students From Transportation Engineers.” Attended by approximately sixty students, this panel session informed participants about the transportation profession and provided tips on starting their careers. After discussing their background and current projects, panelists answered student questions based on their own observations and experiences in the transportation industry.
Click here to read the full article in the NEXTRANSporter Volume 2, Issue 1
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Kalafatas and Peeta Win Best Paper Award at the AATT 2008 Conference
May 30, 2008 - A paper co-authored by NEXTRANS Center Ph.D. student George Kalafatas and Director Srinivas Peeta won the best paper award at the 10th International Conference on Applications of Advanced Technologies in Transportation (AATT 2008) in Athens, Greece. It received the Best Paper Award in Traffic Engineering from among 800 papers from over 25 countries. The paper, titled "A direct bridge between dynamic traffic assignment and graph theory," proposed an innovative modeling approach for dynamic traffic systems and operations. The contributions are twofold. From an applications standpoint, traffic systems can be simulated with significantly reduced computational times. This is an important step towards real-time route guidance in congested traffic networks, as crucial estimates for the network status can be provided faster to drivers. From a theoretical standpoint, dynamic traffic systems are modeled with an exact graph theoretic representation. This enables the elegant illustration of the synergy between transportation engineering and graph theory.
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UIUC Sweeps FAA Design Challenge for Airport Operations and Maintenance
June 2, 2008 - The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Design Competition for universities has announced the award winners for the Airport Operation and Maintenance Design Challenge. Students from the NEXTRANS Center’s major partner, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) won first, second, and third prizes in this category.
The selection was made by a panel of FAA, industry, and academic experts. The winners were:
- First Place: "Long-Lasting Pavement Structure Rehabilitation: Hot-Mix Asphalt Overlay with Steel Reinforcement Netting Interlayer System" by Hao Wang and Jonguen Baek. (Advisor: Imad Al-Qadi)
- Second Place: "Aircraft Wander Effects on Unbound Aggregate Layers" by Phillip Donovan. (Advisor: Erol Tutumluer)
- Third Place: "A Fast and Automated Approach for Monitoring Groove Deterioration at Airport Pavements" by Hasan Ozer. (Advisor: Imad Al-Qadi)
(Courtesy: Illinois Center for Transportation)
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NEXTRANS Students Showcase Research Projects
Graduate students from Purdue University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Ohio State University got an opportunity to showcase their research projects to RITA Administrator Paul Brubaker and other federal, state and private sector officials and faculty attending the NEXTRANS Summit on May 5, at Purdue University. In addition to describing the problem statement, methodology, goals and objectives, and significance and benefits of the project, students were asked to indicate which research dimensions of the Center were being addressed.
In total eleven students participated: five from Purdue and three students each from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Ohio State University. The posters highlighted the diverse project portfolio of the NEXTRANS Center showcasing the integration of goals, methodology, and technology, covering the issues of mobility, safety and infrastructure renewal, and addressing regional and national needs in transportation and logistics. Names of participating students, institutional affiliation and the title of the poster are provided in the Table below.
Qiang Bai Purdue Analysis of Trade-offs in Highway Project Selection for Integrated Asset Managment Cheng Chen OSU Campis Transit Lab: Advanced Sensor Technology Applications Eshan Dave UIUC Development of Cohesive Zone Based Thermal Cracking Prediction Model Salvador Hernandez Purdue Less-than-Truckload Carrier Collaborative Networkds George Kalafatas Purdue Network Models to Develop Innovative Transportation and Logistics Solutions Seoungbum Kim OSU Length-Based Vehicle Classification on Freeways from Single Loop Detectors Xiaopeng Li UIUC Optimal Sensor Deployment for Traffic Monitoring in Large-scale Transportation Networks: A Preliminary Study Justin Quear Purdue Changes in Transportation Arising From Biofuels in Indiana Anuj Sharma Purdue Improving Signal Operations by Modeling the Driver's Mental Conflict on the Onset of Yellow M. Wang UIUC Effects of Speed Photo Enforcement on Speeding in Work Zones Fanyu Zhou OSU Incorporating Aerial Image-Based Information in AADT Estimation
