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 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.
October 4, 2021
Ph.D. Candidate Lisa Losada-Rojas has been accepted to two prestigious faculty workshops: the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Rising Stars at MIT and Latinx Trailblazers in Engineering at Purdue.
September 7, 2021
Kumares C. Sinha, Olson Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering, is featured in a recent article from Wallethub weighing in on the best & worst cities to drive in.
August 12, 2021
The Lyles School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University invites applications for a tenure track Assistant or Associate Professor as part of Purdue Engineering’s Autonomous and Connected Systems (ACS) Initiative.
July 9, 2021
Professor Kumares C. Sinha, Olson Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering at Purdue University, published an article titled “Reflections on the History of the ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering” in the Journal of Transportation Engineering (JTE) that was recognized as the Editors' Choice.
July 2, 2021
The Indiana Department of Transportation and Purdue University have announced plans to develop the world’s first contactless wireless-charging concrete pavement highway segment. The project will use innovative magnetizable concrete – developed by German startup Magment GmbH – enabling wireless charging of electric vehicles as they drive.
June 8, 2021
Students Sania Seilabi & Amir Davatgari, post-doctoral researcher Mohammad Miralinaghi, and Professor Samuel Labi of the Lyles School of Civil Engineering and the Center for Connected & Automated Transportation (CCAT), received the 2021 Sussman Best Paper Prize from the Frontiers in the Built Environment journal, for their paper titled "Promoting Autonomous Vehicles Using Travel Demand and Lane Management Strategies."
May 28, 2021
Dr. Mohammad Miralinaghi, a post-doctoral researcher in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering and researcher at the Center for Connected and Automated Transportation (CCAT) has been recognized with the 2020 Matthew G. Karlaftis Best Paper Award.
May 6, 2021
Grad student Jairaj Desai has been named a recipient of the 2021-2022 Edward J. Cox Memorial Transportation Scholarship Award. The award is presented annually by the Indiana Section of the Institute of Transportation Engineers.
May 6, 2021
CE senior Steven Rogers has been named a recipient of the 2021-2022 Edward J. Cox Memorial Transportation Scholarship Award. The award is presented annually by the Indiana Section of the Institute of Transportation Engineers.
