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
December 4, 2019
Sikai Chen, a recently graduated PhD who worked with Professor Samuel Labi in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering and the Center for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAT), has been named recipient of the Spring/Summer 2019 Civil Engineering Best Dissertation Award.
December 4, 2019
Magment Concrete Wireless Power and Purdue University officials announced Wednesday (Dec. 4) an innovation partnership to advance electric transportation pilots at Purdue’s Discovery Park. Magment and Purdue University researchers in the Joint Transportation Research Program will be working on several test cases including micro-mobility scooters, autonomous electric utility vehicle equipment and robotic shop floor delivery systems.
November 4, 2019
Next time you drive your car or truck, consider this: Your vehicle probably knows more about the road conditions you face than the agency that built and maintains the roads.
October 30, 2019
Crash reconstruction is not the kind of mapping mission you'd usually associate with drone technology. It's also not the type of application that first comes to mind when you think of applications harnessed by first responders. But, thanks to research being conducted by CE Professors Darcy Bullock and Ayman Habib, this is a field in which drones are already making a tangible difference.
October 2, 2019
PhD student Takahiro (Taka) Yabe received 2nd place in the 2019 NetMob conference poster competition for his research titled, "Understanding post-disaster population recovery patterns."
September 26, 2019
PhD student Hemant Gehlot (advised by Dr. Satish V. Ukkusuri and Dr. Shreyas Sundaram) has been awarded an honorable mention as one of the three finalists for the Best Student Paper Award at the IFAC Workshop on Distributed Estimation and Control in Networked Systems (NecSys) 2019 for the paper entitled, "Approximation algorithms for the recovery of infrastructure after disasters under precedence constraints."
August 22, 2019
Transportation incidents like poor bridge or highway performance often leave drivers wondering if their local roads and bridges are adequate. A nationwide effort that began in Indiana and New York – and is now celebrating its 60th anniversary – aims to ensure the safety of local drivers. The Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) helps street departments, county highway departments and local elected officials to better meet the needs of the public by acting as a resource for training, technical assistance and technology transfer.
July 24, 2019
Samuel Labi, Professor of Civil Engineering and Associate Director of the Center for Connected and Automated Transportation (CCAT), delivered a keynote lecture titled, "Preparing Our Infrastructure for Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Operations: Challenges and Opportunities," at the 2019 International Conference on Smart Cities in Seoul, Korea on July 17, 2019.
July 11, 2019
Darcy Bullock, the Lyles Family Professor of Civil Engineering and director of the Joint Transportation Research Program at Purdue, will testify at 2 p.m. today (July 11) before the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology's Subcommittee on Research and Technology.
June 19, 2019
In recognition of its extraordinary community outreach initiatives, the Joint Transportation Research Program, along with programs from three other member universities of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), have been selected as regional winners of the 2019 W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award. As regional winners, Colorado State University, Cornell University, University of Louisville, and Purdue University will represent and compete for the national C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Scholarship Award, which will be announced during the APLU Annual Meeting November 10-12 in San Diego, California.
April 22, 2019
Satish Ukkusuri, Professor of Civil Engineering, will be a keynote speaker at the 1st International Conference on Smart Tourism, Smart Cities and Enabling Technologies, referred to as The Smart Conference, May 1-3 at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
April 3, 2019
Purdue’s Discovery Park, in partnership with the Joint Transportation Research Program, the Purdue Policy Research Institute, and the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, is hosting a Connected and Autonomous Transportation Vehicle (CATV) workshop for Purdue faculty and research staff. The free event will take place 1-5 p.m. April 24 in the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship, Room 121.
March 27, 2019
Meg Hunter, undergraduate student at the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, has been awarded the 2019 Women's Transportation Seminar (WTS) Greater Indianapolis Chapter Scholarship. The scholarship was established to recognize an undergraduate female in the transportation industry.
March 20, 2019
Lyles School of Civil Engineering graduate student Seyed Ali Ghahari and undergraduate student Margaret Hunter have been named recipients of the 2019 Edward J. Cox Memorial Transportation Scholarship Awards. The award is presented annually by the Indiana Section of the Institute of Transportation Engineers.
March 6, 2019
Congratulations to Tariq U. Saeed, recipient of the 2019 College of Engineering Outstanding Research Award. The award recognizes excellence in graduate student research from across the College of Engineering. Tariq will be recognized at the Spring Graduate Student Awards luncheon through a certificate and a $2000 award.
February 28, 2019
A paper by PhD student Irina Benedyk and Adjunct Professor of Civil Engineering Srinivas Peeta has received the 2018 Editor's Choice Award from the Springer journal Maritime Economics & Logistics.
February 19, 2019
Lisa L. Losada Rojas, PhD student at the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, has been awarded a $3,000 scholarship from the Women's Transportation Seminar (WTS) Greater Chicago Area chapter for the 2018-2019 academic year.
January 31, 2019
The 105th Purdue Road School will be held March 4-7 on the Purdue University campus. This is a great Indiana tradition that brings together federal, state and local agencies, industry, consulting and academia to collaborate and reflect on diverse transportation topics. Over 3,000 attendees will have the opportunity to hear Opening Session and Luncheon keynote addresses from leaders in the transportation field, choose from nearly 200 hours of technical sessions, visit a variety of exhibitors, and network with their peers.
January 25, 2019
Kumares C. Sinha, Olson Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering, has been recognized by Jadavpur University, India, at the commemoration of its 60th anniversary, as a Distinguished University Alumnus.
January 16, 2019
Idling in a long highway line of slowed or stopped traffic on a busy highway can be more than an inconvenience for drivers and highway safety officers. It is one of the most vulnerable times for "secondary accidents," which often can be worse than an original source of the slowdown, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration. In fact, secondary crashes go up by a factor of almost 24 during the time that highway safety officials are assessing and documenting the crash site.
