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
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.
December 14, 2018
Holiday drivers who find that roadwork is driving them crazy may find in future years that a Purdue University-affiliated startup can seal the deal for a merrier journey. Environmental Concrete Products is a startup based on a Purdue innovation, with funding for the Indiana Soybean Alliance, which uses engineering sealant technology to protect and prolong the life of new and existing concrete to make a smoother ride for travelers and save costs for road upkeep and repairs.
October 23, 2018
In the coming weeks, 40 scooters will be distributed across Purdue's campus to begin a four-week research project on best practices for using e-scooters. The research project, called Jelly, is being led by Darcy Bullock, Purdue's Lyles Family Professor of Civil Engineering and director of the Joint Transportation Research Program, which is operated out of Purdue's Discovery Park.
October 19, 2018
A study completed in 2017 by the Lyles School of Civil Engineering was used by the Indiana General Assembly to realign the highway taxation structure that addressed the growing transportation-funding needs. The study concluded that the existing (at that time) fuel tax was inadequate to ensure that the state's roadways were maintained properly. According to the report, federal and most state fuel tax rates have not changed for many years. That and the increased fuel efficiency of modern cars has created a serious funding gap that is rapidly growing.
October 18, 2018
Electric cars that charge while driving? Purdue civil engineers want to make that leap. Konstantina (Nadia) Gkritza, Associate Professor in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, studies the practicality of a roadway where electric-powered vehicles are recharged as they drive along it.
August 17, 2018
Congratulations to Professors Jon Fricker and Samuel Labi for receiving the 2018 D. Grant Mickle Award from the Transportation Research Board. The award was given for their paper titled, "Bundling Bridge and Other Highway Projects: Patterns and Policies."
July 25, 2018
A Purdue University-developed product called Blueavion f1, launched Monday (July 23) by Bluemac Analytics Inc. is shown to help airports more accurately log airport operations. The technology, developed by Darcy Bullock, the Lyles Family Professor of Civil Engineering and director of the Joint Transportation Research Program, and John Mott, associate professor in the Purdue Polytechnic Institute School of Aviation and Transportation Technology, features a transponder data collection system that provides a more accurate method to determine the number of operations an airport has in a given time.
July 10, 2018
John Mott was awarded the Fall 2017 Civil Engineering Best Dissertation Award and will be recognized this fall at the Civil Engineering Scholarship and Awards Banquet.
July 10, 2018
Purdue University’s Discovery Park will lead a nationwide partnership focusing on the expanding research field of connected and autonomous vehicles. Darcy Bullock, the Lyles Family Professor of Civil Engineering and director of the Joint Transportation Research Program, will lead the partnership through Discovery Park, Purdue University’s complex for major interdisciplinary research activities.
June 27, 2018
PhD student Tho Le is spending this summer collaborating with faculty at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands on a project matching and routing strategies for emerging crowd-shipping systems.
June 27, 2018
Tariq U. Saeed, Hugh W. and Edna M. Donnan Doctoral Candidate of Transportation & Infrastructure Systems Engineering at Purdue University's Lyles School of Civil Engineering, is the 2018 winner of the Jack E. Leisch Fellowship Award. With a strong showing as runner-up for this year's fellowship is CE doctoral student Seyed Ali Ghahari.
May 4, 2018
Sikai Chen, a doctoral student in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, has been awarded the 2018 Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship Award by the Office of Interdisciplinary Graduate Programs (OIGP). The Bilsland Dissertation Fellowship is a highly competitive award recognizing outstanding Ph.D. candidates for their superior interdisciplinary academic abilities and scholarly achievements. The title of Sikai's dissertation is "Crash Factors and Roadway Design Implications: New Evidence in the Traditional Environment and Insights into Emerging Operating Environments."
April 25, 2018
Congratulations to the Purdue Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Traffic Bowl Team on winning the Great Lakes District competition! This annual competition among ITE student chapter teams uses transportation planning and engineering topics for the clues, questions and answers.
March 28, 2018
Dong Yoon Song, a Ph.D. candidate in Civil Engineering, received the 2018 ITS Michigan Scholar Award from the Intelligent Transportation Society of Michigan for the best student poster at the 2018 Global Symposium on Connected and Automated Transportation and Infrastructure, held in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
March 28, 2018
CE doctoral student Seyed Ali Ghahari has been appointed as a member to the Standing Committee on Tunnels and Underground Structures (AFF60) of Transportation Research Board (TRB) of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
March 22, 2018
The 104th Purdue Road School Transportation Conference and Expo was the largest Road School on record at 3,010 attendees. This year's event included 191 technical sessions involving 375 speakers and moderators. The program had 175 Professional Development Hours (PDHs) available, including 4 hours of Indiana Statutes and Ethics for Professional Engineers.
