Research Highlights

On October 26, 2017, the Joint Transportation Research Program hosted INDOT’s Communication staff from all over the state at Purdue. Highlights of the visit included interacting with Civil Engineering faculty and staff in the Hampton Materials, Concrete, and Traffic Labs. Each lab presented demonstrations on research projects related to relevant INDOT research and implementation.

On October 25, 2017, members off Indiana Department of Transportation EVOLVE mentoring program and the Joint Transportation Research Program toured the Ports of Burns Harbor in Portage, Indiana.

On June 6th, JTRP hosted the INDOT Executive Staff on the Purdue campus. Highlights of the visit included a poster session and demonstrations by JTRP researchers at the Niswonger Aviation Technology Building.

The Connected and Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) Summit was held on June 15, 2017, in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Professor Marc Maguire of Utah State University was the first out-of-state researcher to use UAV's to inspect the S-BRITE Center's steel bridge Probability of Detection (POD) specimens.

The INDOT team and the JTRP group were recently recognized for the research collaboration that resulted in a best paper award.

On April 19th, members of Indiana Department of Transportation EVOLVE mentoring program and the Joint Transportation Research Program toured the Subaru of Indiana Automotive plant in Lafayette, Indiana. The tour consisted of observing the assembly line build a Subaru vehicle from start to finish, starting with coils of raw steel being stamped and pressed into vehicle parts then later viewing the final test drive of a brand new Subaru.

The 103rd Purdue Road School Transportation Conference and Expo was the largest Road School on record at 2,709 attendees. This year’s event included 155 technical sessions involving 327 speakers and moderators. The program had 164 Professional Development Hours (PDHs) available, including 4 hours of Indiana Statutes and Ethics for Professional Engineers.

Over the past year there has been a strong interest in using unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) for transportation research.