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
January 27, 2023
In the "Crossroads of America," Purdue University engineers — including Lyles School of Civil Engineering Professors John Haddock and Nadia Gkritza — and their Indiana-based partners are making it possible for electric cars to charge on roads while driving.
September 13, 2022
Satish V. Ukkusuri, Reilly Professor of Civil Engineering and director of the Urban Mobility Networks and Intelligence (UMNI) Lab at Purdue, has been named a fellow by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Board of Directors.
September 9, 2022
A joint project between the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) and Purdue University to develop one of the world's first dynamic wireless power transfer highway segments has earned a place in the 2022 Top 100 Strategic U.S. Infrastructure Project Report.
August 4, 2022
Congratulations to the Purdue University Student Chapter of Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) for being selected to receive the 2022 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 4, 2022
Darcy Bullock, Lyles Family Professor of Civil Engineering and Director of the Joint Transportation Research Program (JTRP), has been awarded the prestigious 2022 Wilbur S. Smith Distinguished Transportation Educator Award by the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE).
July 25, 2022
It is with great sorrow that we share the news of Prof. Jon Fricker's passing. Jon was an educator and researcher at Purdue University for more than 40 years. He inspired countless students and colleagues throughout his career — and he will be missed by many more.
July 22, 2022
The School of Civil Engineering has taken delivery of a new SAE Level 4 autonomous vehicle that will serve as a research platform.
Yiheng Feng, assistant professor of civil engineering, will lead testing of the car, including developing and testing smart transportation applications such as autonomous driving, cooperative perception, smart intersection management and cybersecurity.
June 30, 2022
A goal for the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Center for Advancing Sustainability through Powered Infrastructure for Roadway Electrification (ASPIRE) is to develop innovative dynamic (in-motion) wireless power transfer technology.
April 20, 2022
Purdue will partner in the Build America Center, a multi-university public-private collaboration led by the University of Maryland. Dr. Sam Labi, Professor of Civil Engineering at the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, will serve as director of the Purdue Center.
April 7, 2022
Howell Li, Research Analyst at Purdue Civil Engineering, explains on Inside INdiana Business how a new high-tech tool designed by scientists at Purdue University and the Indiana Department of Transportation can help drivers get through intersections more safely.
March 16, 2022
Professor of Civil Engineering Nadia Gkritza explores the development and feasibility of a magnetized concrete technology that charges electric vehicles as they drive over it.
March 2, 2022
JTRP senior software engineer Howell Li recently made headlines with his invention to improve traffic light safety. Find out how he got his start, his favorite hobby, and much more.
February 24, 2022
Satish Ukkusuri, Reilly Professor of Civil Engineering, has been appointed co-Editor-in-Chief of the new ACM Journal on Autonomous Transportation Systems published by the Association for Computing Machinery. He will serve a three-year term through February 2025.
February 16, 2022
Howell Li, principal research analyst, and transportation research engineer Jijo Mathew of the Joint Transportation Research Program in Purdue University's Lyles School of Civil Engineering have collaborated with INDOT to create technology that improves safety as vehicles approach a signalized intersection.
February 14, 2022
Nadia Gkritza, Professor of Civil Engineering and Agricultural and Biological Engineering, has been selected by ASCE's Transportation and Development Institute to receive the 2022 Frank M. Masters Transportation Engineering Award for "outstanding contributions to research and education enhancing innovation in transportation planning and engineering."
December 14, 2021
Satish Ukkusuri, Reilly Professor of Civil Engineering, has been appointed the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Big Data Analytics in Transportation (BDAT), published by Springer Nature.
December 13, 2021
Dr. Washim Uddin Mondal, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, along with Satish Ukkusuri, Reilly Professor of Civil Engineering, received the best paper award in the Cooperative AI workshop at the 2021 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) for their paper, "On the Approximation of Cooperative Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL) using Mean Field Control (MFC)."
December 1, 2021
Nadia Gkritza, Professor of Civil Engineering and Agricultural and Biological Engineering, discusses work being done at ASPIRE Research Center to develop the world's first contactless wireless-charging concrete pavement highway segment in this New York Times article (subscription required).
November 19, 2021
The paper, titled "Intelligent driving intelligence test for autonomous vehicles with naturalistic and adversarial environment," was published in the journal Nature Communications in February of this year.
October 8, 2021
Howell Li, the Joint Transportation Research Program’s Principal Research Analyst at Purdue University’s Lyles School of Civil Engineering, leads a team that has developed a new system to manage traffic intersections with signals and to mitigate the risk associated with running a red light.
