Dr. Chandra Bhat Received CUTC’s Lifetime Achievement Award

Dr. Chandra Bhat recently received the Lifetime Achievement in Transportation Research and Education Award (Academic) from the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC). This award is given to “individuals who have had a long history of significant and outstanding contribution to university transportation education and research resulting in a lasting contribution to transportation.” He received the award at the CUTC Banquet in Washington DC on January 7, 2017. CUTC is a national umbrella organization of university transportation centers in the U.S. For more information:

http://www.caee.utexas.edu/news/783-bhatcutc

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.

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)

Dr. Shashi Nambisan Catches the Tide

Crimson Tide that is!

Dr. Shashi Nambisan, a civil engineer and leading expert in transportation and infrastructure systems, has been selected to lead transportation research efforts at The University of Alabama. Dr. Nambisan is a past president and a long time active member of ATPIO . For more information, click here. We at ATPIO congratulate Dr. Nambisan and UA on this new gig.

ATPIO Member Discusses Colorado’s Proposed High Speed Transit HYPER LOOP project.

The Colorado Department of Transportation is one of 35 semi-finalists in a global competition, and one of two semi-finalists in Colorado, for the new technology which would provide a safer and faster commute.

Shailen Bhatt, Executive Director of Colorado State Department of Transportation and a member of ATPIO, discusses Colorado’s proposed High Speed Transit HYPER LOOP project. This project is sort of “bullet train” that will move people and freight inside capsules at a speed of up to 700mph. The funds will come from both taxes as well as private funding from the Hyperloop One company. Bhatt said the pipeline is a suspended vacuum tube that will move people and things inside capsules at a speed of up to 700 mph.

“You can put people in them. You can put freight in them. There’s a lot of applications. So it’s kind of like the railroad- only a couple hundred years later, and it’s a new technology,” said Bhatt.

For more information visit the following link:

http://denver.cbslocal.com/2017/01/07/colorado-one-step-closer-to-supersonic-transit-with-hyperloop/