March 17, 2023
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March 17, 2023

Members of the CMU Transportation Club hosted four transportation professionals for their annual career panel event.  Panelists represented the City of Pittsburgh, Department of Mobility & Infrastructure, WSP, Pittsburgh Regional Transit, and Hitachi Rail.  The panelists shared their experiences in planning transit-oriented communities, conducting right-of-way development, managing sidewalks and curbs, and rail wayside engineering.  Students asked questions of the panelists, as well as engaged in networking at the end of the event.

February 16, 2023
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February 16, 2023

Students from the CMU Transportation Club attended the Hitachi Rail Open House to learn about the career and development opportunities that Hitachi Rail offers.  Students had the chance to speak with several of the Hitachi Rail top business leaders, toured the research labs, and participated in individualized sessions to learn more about their projects and available positions.

January 27, 2023
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January 27, 2023

A student-led team from the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, AI on Ice, has partnered with CMU spinout Locomation, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and Zamboni to add autonomous capabilities to a two-Zamboni machine convoy on the ice.  UTC researcher John Dolan, a principal systems scientist in the Robotics Institue is the adviser on the project. Read more here.

January 18, 2023
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January 18, 2023

Mobility21 UTC researcher Jeremy Michalek’s second year Ph.D. student Hannah Morin, who studies Engineering and Public Policy and Material Science and Engineering, was interviewed by a Hudson High School student from Hudson, Ohio for his paper on electric vehicles, specifically the California 2035 all EV rule.

January 16, 2023
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January 16, 2023

Mobility21 UTC Women in Transportation Fellow for 2021-2023, Maggie Harger attended the Transportation Research Board’s 102nd Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.  The meeting offered her the opportunity to learn about the latest developments in transportation research, policy, and innovative practices from across the world.

Maggie reports some highlights of the event included remarks from U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm on the state of transportation policy in America, specifically the new joint office between the US Department of Transportation and the US Department of Energy.  Additionally, she was also able to view poster presentations from researchers in the field and attend lecterns on topics ranging from concrete modeling to autonomous vehicle policy.

Maggie and other students from CMU were able to meet fellow students involved in transportation at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as several CMU alumni who are now professionals in the field.

January 16, 2023
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January 16, 2023

Carnegie Mellon University student & transportation club member, Brian Hsu attended the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

“My experience at the TRB Annual Meeting allowed me to gain insight into the research happening in the transportation industry and into the inner workings of TRB. As a future roadway engineer, I was particularly excited to see the emphasis in roadway design on safety, complete streets, and human factors. I found the discussions about the AASHTO Green Book and how to effectively implement its guidelines to be very informative. I also learned about some fascinating alternative intersection designs. Through participation in committee and subcommittee meetings, I came to understand how TRB functions and what research is occurring. By attending the TRB Annual Meeting and engaging with the research community, I can improve my practice when I become a roadway engineer. Further, the meeting was the perfect place to learn about new research and to engage with knowledgeable students, researchers, and professionals.”      – Brian Hsu

January 12, 2023
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January 12, 2023

Carnegie Mellon University and Mobility21 UTC researchers, staff and students took part in several lectern and poster sessions during the 2023 Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting including:

Poster Sessions:

• • • Estimating Dynamic Origin-Destination Demand for a Multimodal Transportation Network: A Computational Graph-Based Approach – Sean Qian and Qiling Zou
    • Assessing the Impact of Communication Delay on Speed Harmonization of Connected and Automated Vehicles: Application of Markov Decision Switching to Field Experimental Data – Zulqarnain Khattak
    • Identifying Safety-Critical, Heavy-Duty Vehicles in Fleets with Complementary Vehicle Inspection Data Sets Through Cross-Database Clustering Analysis – Pingbo Tang, Chenyu Yuan, Ying Shi, Ruoxin Xiong
    • COVID-19 Public Transit Precautions: Trade-Offs Between Risk Reduction and Costs – Lily Hanig, Corey Harper, Destenie Nock
    • Calibrating Bridge Element-Level Condition Ratings Through Weighted Inspection Behavior Analysis – Pengkun Liu, Ying Shi, Ruoxin Xiong, Pingbo Tang
    • Energy Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Autonomous Ground Delivery Vehicles – Thiago Rodrigues, Jeremy Michalek, Constantine Samaras
    • Should Ridesourcing Services Pool More Rides? – Matthew Bruchon, Connor Forsythe, Jeremy Michalek
    • Smart Curbspace: Estimating the Potential for Optimized Delivery Vehicle Parking Assignment to Reduce Double Parking, Congestion, and Energy Consumption – Aaron Burns, Jeremy Michalek, Constantine Samaras
    • Does Congestion Pricing for Uber and Lyft Work?: Effects of Chicago’s Downtown Zone Surcharge – Matthew Bruchon, Connor Forsythe, Charlotte Andreasen, Kate Whitefoot, Jeremy Michalek
    • What’s Driving Electric Vehicle Adoption?: Evaluating Changes in U.S. Consumer Preferences and Vehicle Technology – Connor Forsythe, Kate Whitefoot, Jeremy Michalek

Lectern Sessions:

• • • Taking a Multimodal Approach to Equitable Bikeshare Station Siting – Zhufeng Fan, Corey Harper
    • Tools for Assessing Transportation Demand Management Strategies – Lisa Kay Schweyer
    • Bridge Management Models for Load Ratings and Repair Methods – Pingbo Tang
    • Using Automatic Passenger Counting-Automatic Vehicle Location Data to Improve Transit Reliability and Accessibility Analysis – Daryn Lee, Sean Qian
    • A Two-Stage Multi-task Learning Model for Proactive Non-recurrent Traffic Prediction – Sean Qian
    • Air Pollution, Greenhouse Gas, and Traffic Externality Benefits and Costs of Fully Electrifying Ridesourcing Services – Jeremy Michalek
    • Ridesharing the Wealth: Effects of Uber and Lyft on Jobs, Wages, and Economic Growth – Adam Koling, Daniel Armanios, Jeremy Michalek, Connor Forsythe, Akshaya Jha
    • How Clean Does the U.S. Electricity Grid Need to Be to Ensure Electric Vehicles Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions? – Jeremy Michalek
    • Exploring the Congestion, Emissions, and Energy Implications of Switching from In-Person to Online Grocery Shopping – Carlos Mateo Samudio Lezcano, Corey Harper, Destenie Nock, Gregory Lowry, Jeremy Michalek
    • Will Pickup Truck Owners Go Electric? – Connor Forsythe, Kate Whitefoot, Jeremy Michalek

December 19, 2022
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“Wenhao Ding and Jiacheng Zhu, Ph.D. students in [CMU UTC researcher Ding] Zhao’s lab, proposed a new method, Learning to Collide, to identify risky scenarios leveraging the reinforcement learning technique. This method builds a framework where the autonomous system is a victim attacked by the scenario-generation algorithm. … Ding and Zhu’s proposal, ‘Safety-Critical Scenarios Generation and Generalization for Autonomous Driving’ was awarded the 2022 Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship, which promotes innovation, execution, and teamwork.”  Read more here.

December 16, 2022
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December 16, 2022

CMU Heinz College Master of Information Systems Management program students engage in semester long “Capstone Projects” to apply coursework to real-world scenarios.  This week, students shared the results of their semester long research projects during a poster fair.  The projects featured today included the following transportation related projects:

• • Torc
  • US Ignite
  • Chevron 2
  • Green Edge Technologies
  • Blue Triton
  • Make It Home Safe
  • Honda

December 13, 2022
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December 13, 2022

Heinz College Master of Science in Public Policy and Management students from Traffic21 Executive Director Stan Caldwell’s Systems Synthesis course presented their final capstone presentation for their client, InnovatePGH, which focused on Smart Loading Zones and Curb Management.

December 12, 2022
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December 12, 2022

On October 29, after arriving to Phillips Park to help with a local clean-up effort, Mobility21 UTC Program Manager, Lisa Kay Schweyer was surprised to learn 3 Carnegie Mellon University students (Shirui Liang, Maria Manrique, Keziah Virdayanti) were also there to help with the volunteer activity.  She joined the students while picking up litter and had a chance to share what she does at CMU, hear about their trip on the local bus to the park (and uncertainty of riding somewhere new), and learn more about the students’ interest in transportation and the project they had been thinking about for their Integrated Innovation Institute Design Methods class.

Within a week, the students invited Lisa Kay to meet with the project team to learn more about her experience in helping commuters find non-single occupancy vehicle travel.  From that conversation, and their own experience navigating transit systems, the group decided to work on a way to use technology to make the experience of first-time bus riders less stressful.

The team, Shirui Liang, Kaila Richardson, Dongwen Xu, Siyue Shen, Saisri Akondi, Mei Tamaki, and Ashish Mangal dove in, conducted research, used various integrated innovation methods and conducted testing to finally propose their solution – an “AR Your Guide“!

The solution is an augmented reality feature that can be integrated into existing transportation apps. The design turns the bus searching and riding experience into a “Pokemon Go” like game. It provides users with an interactive guide that leads them to unfamiliar bus stops and instructs people new to bus transportation how to pay, track, and request stops.

The team is hoping that app developers use their work to make this solution a reality.

December 7, 2022
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December 7, 2022

CMU’s students in the Smart Cities: Growth with Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) class, instructed by Mobility21 Professor Sean Qian and co-instructed by Mobility21 Executive Director Stan Caldwell, hosted presentations from 10 groups of multidisciplinary master’s students analyzing ITS technologies.

December 3, 2022
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December 3, 2022

Prior to final exam week at CMU, during what can be a busy time for many students, the CMU Transportation Club hosted a networking event for its members. Because the members of the transportation club come from a variety of academic backgrounds, they do not often have a chance to meet one another in class. This opportunity to meet fellow students and share about classes, job opportunities and other overlapping interests was beneficial to all. Additionally, students got to try empanadas from Mi Empanada, a local Pittsburgh bakery. The club plans to host similar events before exam week in the spring semester.

November 12, 2022
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November 12, 2022

Members of the CMU Transportation Club recently attended Transportation CampPGH, an “unconference” event hosted by Mobility Southwestern Pennsylvania. Individuals from a variety of backgrounds were in attendance, from areas such as academia, the private sector, advocacy groups and the City of Pittsburgh. Attendees chose the topics of discussion themselves by submitting topic idea cards, which were then sorted based on theme. The themes chosen for discussion included street design, transit-oriented communities, and advocacy work. Additionally, Vince Valdes, Executive Director and CEO of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, and Beth Osborne, President of Transportation For America presented as keynote speakers.

October 24, 2022
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October 24, 2022

Facilitated by the Mobility21 University Transportation Center, Carnegie Mellon’s Career & Professional Development Center, in partnership with Heinz College Career Services, first autonomous vehicle focused career fair was held on CMU’s campus.  The event provided students an opportunity to meet with companies in the autonomous vehicle industry.

October 1, 2022
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October 1, 2022

Metro21 Intern and Heinz College Masters Student Bobby Lincoln moderated a discussion with Congressman Ro Khanna and Congressman Conor Lamb on the future of technology.

Representative Khanna discussed his new book, “Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work for All of Us,” which offers a revolutionary roadmap to facing America’s digital divide, offering greater economic prosperity to all. In Khanna’s vision, “just as people can move to technology, technology can move to people. People need not be compelled to move from one place to another to reap the benefits offered by technological progress” (from the foreword by Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate in Economics).

September 21, 2022
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September 21, 2022

2020 – 2022 Traffic21 Women in Transportation Fellow Maggie Harger recently participated the ITS World Congress, an international event that brings together world leaders, practitioners, policy makers, researchers, and private industry to advance and unite the intelligent transportation systems industry.  This conference offered an opportunity to learn about current advances in intelligent transportation systems around the world, as well as strategies of implementation and policy considerations.

September 13, 2022
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September 13, 2022

Traffic21 Executive Director, Stan Caldwell presented to the CMU Transportation Club at their first general body meeting of the year about the University Transportation Center.  The inaugural meeting had 30+ students in attendance from various backgrounds, including undergraduates, graduate students, students in public policy, engineering, architecture and information systems management.  The students were able to learn about the club, meet members of the board, and learn about how to get involved.  2020 – 2022 Women in Transportation Fellow, Maggie Harger serves as the chair for the club.

August 31, 2022
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August 25, 2022

In just a few years, a lot has changed for Tessa Guengerich.  She graduated from college, got her first job, and landed a role in the automated vehicle industry.

In both June 2018 & 2019, Mobility21 welcomed Tessa Guengerich to the CMU Robotics Institute Summer Scholars (RISS) program. At the time, Tessa was an undergraduate student at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.  She arrived in Pittsburgh hoping to learn more about machine learning and programming and learn more about the implementation of robots outside of academia. Tessa said she was excited to learn about things she wasn’t exposed to before (computational statistics and machine learning) and was also excited to be surrounded by other students from around the world.

The program provided exposure to hearing and seeing a lot of presentations from different faculty members at CMU about their research. As a Chemical Engineering student, most of the talks were outside of Tessa’s traditional curriculum, but that’s exactly what she enjoyed most about RISS — learning about research she wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise, and trying her hand at tasks that initially intimidated her.

In August 2019, Tessa was offered a job as a Robotics Engineer and began working for Carnegie Mellon University at the National Robotics Engineering Center.  The job was a continuation and expansion of the project she assisted with while part of RISS.

Looking to stretch and gain new skills, she joined ARGO AI, working as part of the Hardware Special Projects team.  The job allows her to stay in Pittsburgh and continue to connect with her RISS mentor, Rachel Burcin.  Tessa has also been able to give back, serving as a mentor to other RISS students.

Rachel Burcin, Robotics Institute Global Programs Manager of Carnegie Mellon University and Co-Director of the RISS program added:  “Working together with Mobility21, we have been able to walk alongside students to open doors and chart new pathways.  Tessa is applying her background, research experience, and passion for education to innovate and promote inclusion in the self-driving industry.  Our partnership with Mobility21 brings together research, industry, and education to re-envision who driving transportation.”

Where does Tessa think she will be in 10 years?  Tessa wants to continue to work in transportation, she says she feels proud to be working in the industry and sees how self-driving cars will help people with disabilities, and increase accessibility.  She says ARGO has locations all over the world, and perhaps she will be able to travel to one of their other locations.

——————

Carnegie Mellon’s RISS Program is an eleven-week summer (June 1 to mid-August) undergraduate research program that immerses a diverse cohort of scholars in cutting-edge robotics projects that drive innovation and have real-world impact. Launched in 2006, RISS is among the best and most comprehensive robotics research programs for undergraduates in the world.

The CMU Mobility21 University Transportation Center has sponsored RISS students since 2017.  The UTC views research and education as two sides of the same coin. We cannot educate for future generations without exposing them to research, development and deployment. We have and will continue to focus on education and workforce development in equal and complementary measure to research, development and deployment.  In addition, the Mobility21 sponsored RISS students have unlocked over $1,000,000 in scholarship support to continue their STEM education.

August 22, 2022
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August 22, 2022

Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute hosts undergraduate student researchers from around the world annually through the Robotics Institute Summer Scholars (RISS) program.  With its committed community of mentors and partners, the Robotics Institute helps launch these scholars into robotics graduate programs and industry with nearly 25 RISS alums receiving offers of admissions to the CMU SCS graduate programs. 

This summer, the scholars joined with the RISS community of alumni and friends of the program to design and create RoboLaunch, an outreach and broadening participation initiative.

RoboLaunch offered a series of talks and conversations from diverse pioneers & RISS alumni exploring how robotics research/education can be fun.

Thirteen sessions were held.  Sessions included Intro to Robotics and the AI Driving Olympics, Robotics for Stress Reduction in Children, and Snakes in Space. 

The result:  RoboLaunch engaged over 13,000 individuals across the US and around the world.

August 16, 2022
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August 16, 2022

Hajra joined Carnegie Mellon University’s MSPPM-DA program in 2020 as a transportation fellow for Traffic21 Institute. Reflecting on her time as a student of Heinz College, she feels honored to have had the opportunity to become a part of the CMU community and be surrounded by some of the best minds under one roof. For someone who deeply cares about how their work impacts society, Hajra says Heinz College turned out to be a perfect fit where she was constantly reflecting and exploring impact of different technological breakthroughs on society at large and how to maximize their social benefits. Her coursework, projects and research mostly centered around transportation and mobility that constantly opened up multiple pathways, especially within the autonomous mobility space which landed her an internship at Aurora, a self-driving vehicle technology company. Since then, she has started to critically understand autonomous driving technology and was able to further expand her research to multi-modal transportation systems including autonomous delivery robots through her research assistantship in the Civil Engineering Department at CMU.

“Joining CMU as a Traffic21 fellow truly set the foundation of every milestone that I achieved in graduate school. With the help of this fellowship, I was not only able to explore opportunities on-campus within the space of transportation and mobility, but also assume leadership roles on multiple occasions and carry out multiple community-led initiatives for Pittsburgh community at large.”

Upon graduation, Hajra joined EBP-US as a Data Analyst- Transportation Economics focus and currently working with multiple DOTs, state agencies and other stakeholders to conduct mileage-based user fee socio-economic equity analysis, benefit-cost studies and cost optimization projects.

She hopes her work continues to improve the state of transportation and mobility by making it sustainable, equitable and accessible for communities across the globe.

August 1, 2022
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August 1, 2022

Mobility21 UTC researcher and CMU College of Civil and Environmental Engineering Associate Professor Pingbo Tang will allow CMU graduate students an opportunity to use his pilot program of software, Mega City 2070, to experience a 3D model of a futuristic and interconnected built environment in the year 2070.  Read more here.

July 15, 2022
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July 15, 2022

Carnegie Mellon University incoming second year Master’s student and Traffic21 Women in Transportation Fellow Maggie Harger recently started her summer internship with the US Department of Transportation Volpe Center. 

Prior to starting her Master’s degree, Maggie worked in the greater Seattle area to implement accessible and equitable public transportation projects as a mobility coordinator for the North King County region. She is interested in public transportation due to its ability to provide access to economicopportunities for people, as well as its positive impact on carbon emission reduction.

This summer, Maggie will be assisting with a variety of projects for partners across the DOT. For example, she is working to support the Federal Transit Administration’s RAISE Discretionary Grant Program through the compilation of resources and data for decision makers, as well as researching material for the Federal Highway Administration’s Complete Streets program. 

She looks forward to continuing her work this summer, as well as learning more skills related to policy implementation at a federal level.

June 6, 2022
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June 6, 2022

Carnegie Mellon University rising Junior, Ken Huang, started his summer internship at SEPTA on June 6.  Growing up in San Francisco, Ken rode transit and liked that he could get to where he wanted to go without worrying about parking or being stuck in the city’s traffic congestion.

In 2020, Ken came to CMU to learn more about the technical side of transportation, enrolling in the school’s civil engineering program.  He quickly found the Transportation Club and joined.  This past year, Ken joined the leadership team.

During the 2022 spring semester, he participated in a club visit to Philadelphia, where the students visited the University of Pennsylvania (a Mobility21 UTC academic partner) and SEPTA.

During the SEPTA tour, Ken asked lots of questions.  The SEPTA staff person suggested Ken apply to work at SEPTA.  The other club leadership encouraged him to follow-up, which he did.

And now he is working for SEPTA as a summer intern, assisting with engineering work for various infrastructure projects including bus loops/turn arounds.  He is also interested in transit planning and hopes to get some exposure to that as well.

May 15, 2022
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May 15, 2022

Students in the Heinz College MISM and MSISPM programs presented their final capstone projects and thesis presentations over the course of two days, two of which were advised by Traffic21 Executive Director Stan Caldwell and Mobility21 Program Manager Lisa Kay Schweyer, and included clients from the US Department of Transportation, PennDOT, and Honda.