Transportation and Infrastructure Systems Engineering
As a branch of civil engineering, transportation engineering has a history that is long and illustrious and a future that is full of promise. The National Academy of Engineering has identified restoring urban infrastructure and implementing smart mobility as grand challenges. We need coordinated approaches to tackle transportation issues by integrating car, rail, bus, truck, walking and bicycling to meet sustainability goals. Currently, we see how smartphones have enabled ride sharing services such as Uber and Lyft, while taxis and GPS-equipped cars and trucks are providing massive amounts of data that was unimaginable a few years back. Before long, it may be common to have vehicles are talking to infrastructure (V2I) and vehicles talking to each other (V2V). Traffic flow with automated vehicles is expected to be much safer and more efficient than with human drivers.
The journey to that future will be fascinating and challenging. The safe and efficient movement of people and goods relies on infrastructure. Highways, airports, railroads, waterways and pipelines need to be planned, designed, operated, and maintained. Purdue's Transportation and Infrastructure Systems Engineering faculty offer a wide range of classes, research facilities, and experiences. Their efforts will have noticeable impacts on challenges such as:
- Asset management
- Data acquisition and analytics
- Emergency response
- Energy
- Freight Transportation and Logistics
- Environment
- Smart Mobility
- Sustainability
- Urban infrastructure
The award-winning Purdue Student Chapter of the Institute of Transportation Engineers introduces students to the transportation profession and fosters a close association of students with practicing engineers, educators from other institutions, and local and national chapters of ITE.
Spotlights
April 3, 2024
CE grad student Greg Brinster was selected as a 2024-2025 Institute of Transportation Engineers Indiana Section Edward J. Cox Memorial Transportation Scholarship Awardee. Greg was presented the award during the 2024 Purdue Road School.
April 3, 2024
CE undergrad David Kopp was selected as a 2024-2025 Institute of Transportation Engineers Indiana Section Edward J. Cox Memorial Transportation Scholarship Awardee. David was presented the award during the 2024 Purdue Road School.
March 29, 2024
At the “Crossroads of America,” Purdue engineers and the Indiana Department of Transportation are working to make it possible for electric vehicles ranging from tractor-trailers to passenger cars to wirelessly charge while driving on highways. Construction begins as soon as April 1 on a quarter-mile test bed on U.S. 231/U.S. 52 in West Lafayette that the team will use for testing how well a patent-pending system designed by Purdue engineers can provide power to a heavy-duty electric truck traveling at highway speeds.
March 11, 2024
This week more than 3,000 transportation professionals will gather in West Lafayette for the 110th annual Purdue Road School Transportation Conference and Expo.
March 7, 2024
Lyles School of Civil Engineering students, alumni, faculty, staff, and friends joined thousands of other engineers at the annual Transportation Research Board (TRB) meeting, held January 7-11 in Washington, D.C.
March 4, 2024
As the largest academic conference focused on the topic of sustainable transportation, the 4th IEEE Forum for Innovative Sustainable Transportation Systems (FISTS) took place in Riverside, California on Feb. 26th-28th, 2024. This year, Purdue CE played a crucial role in organizing this successful event
February 21, 2024
Through a partnership between Big Ten programs, Purdue University researchers are remote testing their autonomous vehicle from a state away.
January 31, 2024
Yiheng Feng, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering and Assistant Director of the Center for Road Safety (CRS), has received the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award to fund his research investigating the cybersecurity problem in next-generation transportation infrastructure.
January 18, 2024
CE grad student Ricardo Chahine was presented the Best Poster Award at the 103rd annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board for his poster titled, "Navigating post-pandemic urban mobility: Unveiling intentions for shared micro-mobility usage across three U.S. cities."
January 11, 2024
Kumares C. Sinha, the Edgar B. and Hedwig M. Olson Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering, has been named an Honorary Member by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), the highest recognition of notable and outstanding professional achievement ITE presents to an individual.
November 29, 2023
CE graduate student Aishwarya Sharma received the best MS poster award at Purdue University's Computational Interdisciplinary Graduate Programs (CIGP) Fall 2023 Symposium, held November 19, 2023.
November 29, 2023
PhD student Ricardo Chahine has been selected as an International Road Federation (IRF) Fellow for the Class of 2024. This fellowship has been the cornerstone for many who are now leading figures in the realm of
roads and transportation globally.
August 25, 2023
Congratulations to the Purdue University Student Chapter of Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) for being selected to receive the 2023 Student Chapter Award. The Student Chapter award recognizes a chapter that has provided an exemplary experience for its members with robust programming and outstanding administration.
August 21, 2023
Konstantina (Nadia) Gkritza, Professor at the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, a Purdue University Faculty Scholar, Director of the Sustainable Transportation Systems Research Group, and the Campus Director of the NSF ASPIRE Engineering Research Center (ERC), has been named a fellow by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Board of Directors.
August 11, 2023
Ph.D. candidate Jiawei Xue received the Best Poster Award for his presentation at the First Research Summit of Urban Science in Beijing on August 5-6, 2023. The title of his poster is, "Predicting Individual Irregular Mobility via Web Search-Driven Bipartite Graph Neural Networks."
August 3, 2023
Purdue University has been named a major partner, with Reilly Professor of Civil Engineering Satish Ukkusuri at the helm, in the first U.S. DOT-funded national security center.
May 16, 2023
Kumares C. Sinha, Edgar B. and Hedwig M. Olson Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering, presented his lecture titled "Next Generation Urban Transportation, Urban Living, and the Role of Tall Buildings" as part of Lehigh University's Fazlur Rahman Khan Distinguished Lecture Series.
May 3, 2023
The Department of Energy has awarded a Purdue University team and Cummins, Inc., a $1.25-million grant to develop two action plans for zero-emission infrastructure along the I-80 Midwest corridor.
April 18, 2023
Nadia Gkritza, Professor of Civil Engineering and Agricultural and Biological Engineering, has been appointed to the Transportation Energy Committee (AMS30) of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
April 7, 2023
A team of researchers at Purdue University's Joint Transportation Research Program, including Director and engineering professor Darcy Bullock, investigated which rural areas would be the best candidates for electric vehicle chargers.
