Education

Undergraduate Education


  • NEXTRANS 2009 Undergraduate Summer Interns Gain Hands-on Experience

    The NEXTRANS Center’s Undergraduate Summer Internship in Transportation provides competitively-selected undergraduate students with the opportunity to complete a program of transportation research and activities at Purdue University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, or The Ohio State University. Participants are exposed to the field of transportation through hands-on, collaborative research under the guidance of NEXTRANS faculty members and graduate researchers. This year’s participants were:

    Dan Brandesky is pursuing a B.S. in Electrical Engineering at The Ohio State University. For his internship, Dan worked with Professor Benjamin Coifman (OSU) on two projects. One aims to determine the feasibility of using existing freeway loop detectors to predict traffic congestion. The second is investigating a new method of collecting traffic survey data via detectors mounted on vehicles. Dan’s future goal is to work in the field of transportation designing systems for urban traffic flow management.

    Eunseok Choi holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (May 2009). For his internship, Eunseok worked with Professor Yanfeng Ouyang (UIUC) on research aimed at providing more accurate traffic data for multimodal freight transportation systems. Eunseok helped to determine the prime sensor locations that will maximize the number of truck detections at minimum cost. Eunseok’s future plans are to complete a Master’s Degree at UIUC and eventually work for a transportation consulting firm.

    Erin Kersh is pursuing a B.E. in Civil Engineering and a B.S. in Mathematics at Vanderbilt University. For her internship, Erin worked with NEXTRANS Director Srinivas Peeta and Research Associate Lili Du (Purdue University) on research that aims to enhance the ability to manage network traffic flow under disasters. Erin’s role was to run a program that helps agencies identify the most optimal links in the network for upgrade. After graduation, Erin plans to pursue a Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering.

    Divya Kumar holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (May 2009). For her internship, Divya worked with NEXTRANS Director Srinivas Peeta and Graduate Researcher Amit Kumar to analyze the convergence properties of traffic assignment algorithms for planning purposes.This information will be used to estimate the link/route flows and travel times in a network. Divya plans to pursue a Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering and eventually become a licensed Professional Engineer (PE).

    Matt Toussaint is pursuing a B.S. in Civil Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For his internship, Matt worked with Riley Edwards (UIUC) to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of railroad track inspection and maintenance. Matt’s role was to analyze historical derailment data to determine causes of derailment specific to turnouts (sections of track that divert trains from one track to another). After graduation, Matt hopes to secure a job in a railroad track maintenance department.

    Kyle Bemis was competitively selected for a Discovery Park Undergraduate Research Internship (DURI). Co-sponsored by NEXTRANS, Kyle’s internship allowed him to work with Professor Dan DeLaurentis on a NEXTRANS project exploring on-demand air service (ODAS), which aims to enhance “doorstep-to-destination” mobility through the use of very light jets. Kyle’s role was to aid in developing statistical models of multimodal transportation networks. He plans to obtain a Master’s Degree in Statistics from Purdue and pursue a career in data analysis.

    In addition to participating in field trips and submitting regular progress reports, interns were required to deliver formal presentations showcasing their work on July 27, 2009 at Purdue University’s Discovery Park. This event was an opportunity for interns to share their research accomplishments with faculty, graduate mentors, and other undergraduate students from all three institutions, as well as the NEXTRANS Center staff, and Discovery Park Associate Director Pankaj Sharma. In addition to gaining insight about a variety of transportation topics, interns received encouragement and guidance in considering graduate-level education and transportation-related careers.

  • Undergraduate Students Take on the “Last Mile” Challenge

    Approximately fifty-five percent of the gasoline in the United States is consumed by passenger vehicles traveling “the last mile” in the global supply chain. There are many reasonable and feasible alternatives to meeting transportation needs of this “last mile” besides gasoline powered passenger vehicles – which historically are trending toward large inefficient SUVs carrying only a single person. Moreover, increased urbanization is significantly increasing the opportunities for replacing single passenger vehicles with alternative transportation powered by renewable energy.

    Against this backdrop, Purdue undergraduate engineering students in Professor Larry Nies’ s class were charged with developing a conceptual design for a transportation system for a large urban area that is exclusively powered by renewable energy collected locally (within 100km). The students were divided into fifteen teams with five teams each assigned to work on the Greater Metropolitan areas of Chicago, Houston and Seattle. The task was to analyze the current transportation system in these areas and provide a conceptual design for meeting the transportation and transportation energy needs for the year 2050.

    The designs were entered into a poster competition on March 3rd which was on display at the Purdue Memorial Union. Posters were evaluated, among other things, for the quality of the analysis and assessment of the transportations needs, clarity of the presentation, feasibility of the design, and knowledge of the team. The teams with the best posters in each group were invited to present at the NEXTRANS Inaugural Summit on May 5 and receive “Achievement in Sustainable Design” awards and certificates from Administrator Paul Brubaker.

    The winning teams were:

    • Seattle: Group 4 (Engstrom, Coffey, Eaton, Burch, Cox, Stanish and Walker)
    • Houston: Group 9 (Stark, Gaspar, Hubacek, Jarrett, Liechty, Wojcicki, and Dracheva)
    • Chicago: Group 5 (Johnston, Hubbard, Conrad, Carnes, Feeley, Deremer, and Steiner) and Group 11 (Haghighi, Kixmiller, Long, Matson, Peterson, and Quig)