CCAT Organizes and Participates in Inaugural USDOT Future of Transportation Summit
Photo credit: U.S. Department of Transportation
The inaugural event was organized by the five national University Transportation Centers as well as the Center for Connected and Automated Transportation (CCAT)
Washington, D.C. — More than 500 people from across the country representing academia, government, and industry assembled at the U.S. Department of Transportation Headquarters in August to highlight the most impactful research project completed by the 35 University Transportation Centers (UTC) funded under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Panel discussions, research demonstrations, and poster sessions took place across the three-day conference. The summit was organized by the National Center for Infrastructure Transformation, the National Center for Sustainable Transportation, Safety21, the National Center for Transportation Cybersecurity and Resiliency, the Travel Behavior and Demand National Center, and the Center for Connected and Automated Transportation (CCAT).
CCAT Director Dr. Henry Liu and Professor Ronnie Chowdhury (Clemson University) chaired the live demonstrations steering committee which provided UTCs with opportunities to discuss transformational research in an indoor and outdoor setting. CCAT provided demonstrations of its Safe AI Framework for Trustworthy Edge Scenario Tests (SAFE TEST) which drastically reduces the time and cost associated with validating the safety performance of autonomous vehicles. The demonstration was led by Sean Shen, Michigan Traffic Lab Managing Director, and Zhijie Qiao, a Ph.D. student advised by Dr. Liu. Haowei Sun, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan provided a pre-recorded view of Mcity‘s TeraSim which is a data-driven simulation environment.
“Having the opportunity to organize the inaugural USDOT Future of Transportation Summit alongside the National University Transportation Centers was an honor. It was incredibly beneficial to be able to highlight our cutting-edge research to government and industry representatives.”
Henry Liu, Director, Center for Connected and Automated Transportation (CCAT)
In addition to demonstrations, UTCs had the opportunity to participate in poster sessions during lunch breaks each day. On day one, Zachary Jerome, a Ph.D. candidate advised by Dr. Liu led a poster session on research that aims to more efficiently manage traffic signals by leveraging connected vehicle trajectory data insights. This work has been featured in Nature Communications, the Associated Press, and the Wall Street Journal.
On day two, Professor Yiheng Feng participated in the poster session to highlight his work at the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Purdue University focused on developing a cooperative perception system. Day three featured a poster session focused on user perceptions of public transit and shared mobility post-COVID-19. Finally, Debby Bezzina organized a panel on workforce development which was moderated by Musharraf Zaman with panelists including Marshall Rich (Blinn College District), Kamryn Carter (Knife River), Jamaine Gibson (The Amalgamated Transit Union), and Masoureh Jeihani (Morgan State University).