IGERT: Graduate Program in Computational Transportation Science

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This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) award establishes a graduate training program in the Information Technology aspects of Transportation Science. Computational transportation scientists will develop the next generation of intelligent transportation systems, aimed at addressing inefficiencies that cause excessive environmental pollution, fuel consumption, risk to public safety, and congestion. IGERT trainees will investigate technologies in which sensors, traveler-devices such as PDAs, in-vehicle computers, and computers in the static infrastructure are integrated into a collaborative environment. Trainees will also investigate both how these technologies are adopted and their impacts. The envisioned transportation environment will incorporate the technologies, enabling solutions to problems such as dynamic ride-sharing, real-time routing, and navigation. Basic research in information management, communications, software architectures, modeling tools, human factors, traffic prediction, and transportation planning will be utilized to found a new discipline that will integrate millions of highly mobile computers and sensors into a collaborative system. IGERT trainees will use a prototype test-bed application that will integrate the results of their research. This prototype is a software system that runs on hand-held computers, and plans optimal trajectories for a traveler using multiple modes of transportation (e.g., bus and then train). The education of trainees will be facilitated by student-faculty co-teaching, student shared workspace, student collaboration, and the requirement for an internship. The broader impacts of this grant include transportation planning professionals who can save the country the costs of excessive petroleum products consumption, environmental pollution, congestion, and traffic fatalities. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.