Tariq Usman Saeed, a Fulbright PhD Scholar in transportation systems engineering, has been awarded the 2016 ThinkSwiss Research Scholarship by the Office of Science, Technology, and Higher Education of the Embassy of Switzerland in Washington, D.C. The scholarship awards a 3-month paid fellowship to carry out research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich.

This is a very competitive fellowship open to all graduate students in the USA, and allows the awardee to carry out research in selected disciplines. Tariq will be carrying out research in transportation infrastructure management for a period of two months during the summer, where he plans to examine some emerging challenges and opportunities associated with the management of transportation infrastructure. These challenges include big data analytics, system-of-systems considerations in infrastructure management, climate change mitigation challenges and opportunities, infrastructure resilience and sustainability, and the potential of technology and social media tools in infrastructure monitoring. It is expected that Tariq’s stay at ETH Zurich, a world-renowned institution, will help promote research collaboration between Purdue and ETH.

Tariq works with Professor Samuel Labi of the division of Transportation Engineering and Infrastructure Systems. He has an M.S. in Transportation Engineering with a minor in Computational Science and Engineering from Purdue. He also has an M.S. and B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology Peshawar, Pakistan.