3-day TEQIP Short Term Course on Concrete Roads at IIT Kharagpur

IIT Kharagpur is organizing the following TEQIP Sponsored Short Term Course.

Title of the Course: “Concrete Roads: Analysis, Design and Evaluation”
Date: February 27 to March 01, 2017 (3 days)
Venue: IIT Kharagpur, West Bengal

IIT Kharagpur invites everyone to participate in the course and/or nominate members. Please note, though the last date for application is mentioned in the Brochure as February 10, 2017, it has now been extended upto February 15, 2015. The web link for the short term course is:
iitkgp.ac.in/events-file/CEP.WRK.16-17.ID.2099

Dr. Ram Pendyala Set to Lead New USDOT University Transportation Center

ATPIO member and former president, Ram Pendyala, is leading a new USDOT-sponsored University Transportation Center (UTC) that aims to improve the mobility of people and goods through innovation in the planning and modeling of future enhancements to the nation’s transportation systems. Pendyala is a professor of transportation systems in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University (ASU), which has been named the lead institution for the new UTC that will focus on improving regional travel demand forecasting models and methods. The center’s work will be part of a larger DOT program to develop new systems and technologies that provide better surface transportation mobility and accessibility across the country.

The new center, called the Center for Teaching Old Models New Tricks — or TOMNET for short — puts Ram Pendyala in charge of a consortium that includes researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Washington, and the University of South Florida. It’s one of 20 Tier 1 centers recently awarded to universities around the country — selected from more than 200 proposals — and the first and only one to be led by an Arizona university since the inception of the University Transportation Centers program two decades ago. The new awards provide each of the Tier 1 centers $7 million over five years.

TOMNET’s mission is to significantly improve data models and analytical tools that are used to plan transportation infrastructure, operate multimodal systems and optimize travelers’ movements in complex networks. The inspiration for the TOMNET center is drawn from the decades of complementary research and experience of Pendyala and Georgia Tech Professor Patricia Mokhtarian, the center’s research director. While Pendyala brings deep expertise in the refinement of regional travel demand forecasting models, Mokhtarian has similar proficiency in the design and analysis of attitudinal surveys. They have long felt the need to combine the strengths of their individual expertise for the improvement of regional planning, forecasting and policymaking.

Member Profile: Ram Pendyala

Ram Pendyala is a professor of transportation systems in, and Associate Director of, the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona. He is also a Senior Sustainability Scientist, closely affiliated with the ASU Global Institute of Sustainability, and a Barrett Honors Faculty affiliated with Barrett, The Honors College.  Dr. Pendyala served on the faculty at Arizona State University during 2006-2014 and rejoined the institution effective August 2016. Dr. Pendyala served as the Frederick R. Dickerson Chair Professor of Transportation Systems in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology from August 2014 to July 2016. Prior to 2006, Dr. Pendyala served on the faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of South Florida for 12 years.  He is an expert in multimodal transportation systems modeling, activity-based travel behavior analysis, and land use and activity-travel demand forecasting.  He has served in a number of professional leadership positions, including: President of the Association of Transportation Professionals of Indian Origin (2011); Chair of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Committee on Traveler Behavior and Values (2003-2009); Chair of the TRB Section on Travel Analysis Methods (2009-2015); Chair of the TRB Planning and Environment Group (2015-2018); Chair of the International Association for Travel Behaviour Research (2010-2012); and Associate Editor of Transportation Research Part D.  He has his PhD and Master’s degrees from the University of California at Davis, and his undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras.

Elsevier Features a Peer-reviewed Article on ATPIO

Journal of Case Studies in Transportation Policy (an Elsevier Journal) published a peer-reviewed article highlighting the activities of ATPIO. The article is written Mr. Arun Shirole, who is a co-founder and the current president of ATPIO.

Mr. Shirolé is internationally well known for his engineering and management expertise. He has over 40 years of experience that covers planning, design, construction, rehabilitation and maintenance of bridges and highways. Previously he has served as a Senior Vice President of Arora and Associates, P.C. a consulting engineering firm and as the Executive Director of the National Steel Bridge Alliance (NSBA), a semi-autonomous division of the American Institute of Steel Construction. He is now NSBA’s Executive Director Emeritus.

Abstract:

Established in 2004 as a non-profit organization, the Association of Transportation Professionals of Indian Origin (ATPIO) is focused on its strategic objective of facilitating bilateral collaborative activities and partnerships between diverse groups of transportation professionals in US and India. These activities include research, as well as knowledge and technology transfer. Over the past decade ATPIO has organized free webinars, technical presentations at its Annual Meetings, co-sponsored conferences and workshops; as well as collaborated with academics, research organizations and governmental agencies both in US and in India.

This paper summarizes these activities and discusses collaborative research between academics from US and India. The paper also discusses ATPIO’s current and proposed future initiatives aimed at bringing public and private sector counterparts from US and India together to facilitate current research based knowledge and technology transfer for betterment of transportation in the 21 st Century. The paper concludes with a brief summary of ATPIO’s accomplishments and identifies challenges it has encountered in the pursuit of its strategic objective.

Link to the article

Download (PDF, 347KB)

Member Profile: Kumares Sinha

ATPIO Founding President Dr. Kumares C. Sinha is no stranger to the community of transportation professionals around the world. Dr. Sinha is Edgar B. & Hedwig M. Olson Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue University. He also serves as a Guest Lockheed Martin Professor of Engineering and Computer Science in University of Central Florida and an Eminent Scholar in Residence at Texas A&M University. He has been active in teaching, research and practice in transportation systems planning and engineering for about five decades. He currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Transportation Research Board and he is the Editor-in- Chief Emeritus of the Journal of Transportation Engineering. He has served on several Federal Advisory Committees in the US and has consulted for the World Bank on infrastructure and transportation issues. He is an Honorary Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering.