January 25, 2022
Posted in What's Happening

January 25, 2022

SAFE has announced that former Mobility21 Diversity Fellow Allanté Whitmore has been named Director of their Autonomous Vehicle Initiative, leading efforts to advocate for well-thought out and safe policy solutions to advance critical AV technology. Read more here.

January 8, 2022
Posted in What's Happening

January 8, 2022

Carnegie Mellon University student Rick Grahn was honored tonight as Mobility21 University Transportation Center’s “Student of the Year” at the Council of University Transportation Center’s annual awards event.

Annually, the United States Department of Transportation honors the most outstanding student from each participating University Transportation Center for his/her achievements and promise for future contributions to the transportation field. Students of the year are selected based on their accomplishments in such areas as technical merit and research, academic performance, professionalism, and leadership.

Carnegie Mellon University’s Traffic21 Institute houses Mobility21, the National University Transportation Center for Improving Mobility. Students from CMU, University of Pennsylvania, The Ohio State University, or Community College of Allegheny County were eligible for the Mobility21 UTC nomination.

Meet our winner:

Rick Grahn, the Mobility21 National University Transportation Center for Improving Mobility Student of the Year.

Rick Grahn is a research assistant working under Dr. Sean Qian and Dr. Chris Hendrickson in the Mobility Data Analytics Center. His research interests include shared modes and public transit, with a focus on how to best integrate new technologies to improve their efficiency, accessibility, and reliability in both urban and rural settings. Rick is looking forward to a career in research addressing sustainability and equity issues within the transportation system. He is also a registered professional engineer in California.

In 2021, Rick published a paper in Transportation Research Part C and a paper in ASCE: Journal of Infrastructure Systems.

Educating, recruiting and training new workers is critical to managing our country’s infrastructure safely and efficiently.  Mobility21 strives to help develop a transportation workforce capable of designing and maintaining the complex transportation systems of tomorrow. Help us congratulate our 2022 UTC Student of the Year!

To learn more about the University Transportation Centers’ Student of the Year awards please click here.

December 16, 2021
Posted in What's Happening

December 16, 2021

Stan Caldwell, Mobility21 UTC Executive Director & researcher, presented a session on his emerging transportation technology policy research to high school students and faculty from suburban and rural school districts throughout western Pennsylvania.  The event titled Automotive Technician Scholarship Contest & Student / Instructor Transportation Update was sponsored by Bob Koch from Mobility21 UTC academic partner, Community College of Allegheny County and held at their West Hills Campus Automotive Technology Center.  There were 62 attendees, 39 of which competed for scholarships.

October 18, 2021
Posted in What's Happening

October 18, 2021

Today, the CMU US Ignite student Capstone Team (Brittany Pruitt, Dillon Cox, Mika Ansley, Gisselt Gomez, Roy Wang and Sophie Abo, advised by Mobility21 Program Manager, Lisa Kay Schweyer) presented their mid-term update to the client and advisors.  The class gave this presentation to provide updates and gather feedback from attendees.  The team will be completing their work by the end of the semester.

September 4, 2021
Posted in What's Happening

September 4, 2021

Mobility21’s RISS Rayna Hata has completed her project centered around the localiation of vision or mobility impaired pedestrians as they cross urban intersections using the PedPal app and has this to say about her experience:

“This summer, I had the pleasure of working in the Intelligent Coordination and Logistics Lab under the mentorship of  Dr. Stephen Smith and Dr. Isaac Isukapati.  While crossing an intersection feels like an easy task, vision-impaired pedestrians face difficulties such as spending multiple cycles of signal changes to understand the intersection or straying off from the borders of the crosswalk. My end goal for this project is to have the app and the device accurately track and guide the pedestrian as they approach and cross the intersection.

This research experience was my formal introduction to the field of robotics research. This experience solidified my interest in pursuing a graduate degree and a career in Robotics upon graduation. I cannot thank Mobility 21 enough for this sponsorship and support, and I am excited to keep working with the lab throughout my school year to complete this project.” 

The Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute Summer Scholars program connects students from across the country and world to contribute to robotics research alongside top CMU researchers. With 43 scholars from 11 countries and 33 home universities, the 2020 RISS cohort is the largest cohort since the inception of the program in 2006. Forty percent of the 2020 participating scholars are from communities underrepresented in STEM.

August 12, 2021
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August 12, 2021

Mobility21 provides a comprehensive list of transportation-related courses offered by Carnegie Mellon University … check out the updated listing for the fall 2021 semester.  Find the list of courses offered for the current and past semesters here.

July 30, 2021
Posted in What's Happening

July 30, 2021

Mobility21 UTC welcomes Traffic21 Women in Transportation Fellow for 2021-2023, Maggie Harger.

Maggie is pursuing her Master of Science in Public Policy and Management with an interest in transportation policy. Prior to her time at Carnegie Mellon, she completed her undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies from Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA, and worked as a mobility coordinator for the North King County region near Seattle. This role involved working with city planners, local human service providers, elected officials, and regional transit agencies to identify transportation challenges for populations with unique mobility needs, including older adults, people with disabilities, and low income individuals.

Maggie hopes to continue learning about the intersection of efficient transportation, environmental sustainability, and economic advancement during her time as the Traffic21 Women in Transportation Fellow. In her spare time, Maggie can be found exploring the many bike paths of Pittsburgh.

Learn more about the Mobility21 student leaders here: https://mobility21.cmu.edu/about/leadership/student-leadership/.

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The Traffic21 Women in Transportation fellowship provides financial support to an incoming student who is entering either the Carnegie Mellon University Heinz College MSPPM (Public Policy and Management) or MISM (Information Systems Management) degree programs.  Students who have demonstrated an interest and commitment to Intelligent Transportation Systems are eligible to apply for the fellowship.  The fellow’s work supports the Mobility21 University Transportation Center’s activities.

July 16, 2021
Posted in What's Happening

July 16, 2021

Mobility21 UTC researcher Bob Iannucci worked with students as faculty advisor for the 2021 CPS-IoT Week virtual conference, where researchers from the cyber-physical systems and Internet of Things fields for a series of five conferences.  The student team won second place at the competition with their presentation “One Program to Rule the Intersection.”

Learn more here.

June 22, 2021
Posted in What's Happening

June 22, 2021

The Robotics Institute Summer Scholars program of Carnegie Mellon University hosted “Materials & Career Paths in Robotics & Tech” in conjunction with the Technology & Engineering Education Association (TEEAP) to prepare students for 21st century careers in technology.

June 5, 2021
Posted in What's Happening

June 5, 2021

Mobility21 academic partners at the University of Pennsylvania’s F1Tenth Team organized a Virtual Autonomous Racing Competition at Trinity College, Dublin. This was a student run event where participants submitted their racecar software agents to race against autonomous driving algorithms developed by others.

June 1, 2021
Posted in What's Happening

June 1, 2021

Members of The University of Pennsylvania’s F1Tenth autonomous racing team have teamed up with Riders.AI to conduct a series of virtual autonomous racing events.  Riders.AI has developed a professional virtual racing cloud-based platform to organize international competitions.

April 22, 2021
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April 22, 2021

Working with Ph.D. student Weiran Yao, Mobility21 UTC research Sean Qian has extracted information from tweets to provide accuracy in predicting morning traffic patterns.  Read the full story here.

April 15, 2021
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April 15, 2021

Members of the Mobility21 academic partners at the University of Pennsylvania’s F1Tenth team have partnered with the LG Silicon Valley Lab  to develop a F1Tenth vehicle and race track for autonomous racing in the LG SVL Simulator, which is the leading AV simulator.  Watch the simulation here.

March 25, 2021
Posted in What's Happening

March 25, 2021

Today, five CMU MSPPM-DM students – Thomas Hurley, Akshay Oza, Karunya Manoharan, Yue Wu, and Yuran Zhu – presented an overview of their capstone project.   The project, led by UTC researcher Beibei Li, is developing a real-time dashboard for base personnel to reduce traffic congestion at the Fort Carson army base.  The team will continue the work on this project, refining the dashboard, and adding predictive analytics features.  Mobility21 Program Manager, Lisa Kay Schweyer attended and provided feedback to the team.

February 8, 2021
Posted in What's Happening

February 8, 2021

The CMU Transportation Club kicked off the year with their first meeting.  During the meeting, attendees learned more about Traffic21, Mobility21, upcoming events for the Spring 2021 semester and internship opportunities. If you’re interested in transportation or want to learn more about transit in PGH, then check out the transportation club!

January 27, 2021
Posted in What's Happening

January 27, 2021

Students Emily Kennedy and Seunglee David Park of the University of Pennsylvania, a Mobility21 UTC academic partner, published an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer which discusses a new way for Philadelphia transportation leaders to measure the impact of system changes on racial equity.  Both are students in the Master of City Planning  in Transportation course led by Dr. Megan Ryerson.  Read their article here.

January 21, 2021
Posted in What's Happening

January 21, 2021

Mobility21 UTC researcher Maxine Eskenazi’s student, Yulan Feng, presented the paper “Towards Automatic Route Description Unification in Spoken Dialog Systems,” which describes the construction of a pipeline to automate the route description unification process in spoken dialog systems during the Spoken Language Workshop today.  Her 15-minute presentation introduced the technical details of the pipeline, the overall GetGoing system, and the collaboration her team had with UPMC.

The SLT Workshop is a biennial flagship event of IEEE Speech and Language Processing Technical Committee. The main theme for SLT 2021 was “Spoken language technologies: deep learning and beyond” (as deep learning has witnessed great success in spoken language technologies over the last decade).

January 6, 2021
Posted in What's Happening

January 6, 2021

Camille Boggan was honored tonight as Mobility21 University Transportation Center’s “Student of the Year” at the Council of University Transportation Center’s annual awards banquet.

Annually, the United States Department of Transportation honors the most outstanding student from each participating University Transportation Center for his/her achievements and promise for future contributions to the transportation field. Students of the year are selected based on their accomplishments in such areas as technical merit and research, academic performance, professionalism, and leadership.  Read about all the Students of the Year in the annual booklet.

Carnegie Mellon University’s Traffic21 Institute houses Mobility21, the National University Transportation Center for Improving Mobility. Students from CMU, University of Pennsylvania, The Ohio State University, or Community College of Allegheny County were eligible for the Mobility21 UTC nomination.

Meet our winner:

Mobility21, the National University Transportation Center for Improving Mobility Student of the Year.

Camille Boggan is a current city planning graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Miami University (Ohio) in 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in Sociology. Camille has worked as a graduate research assistant in Dr. Megan Ryerson’s Smart Mobility Lab, supporting research efforts on transportation safety and wayfinding. In 2020 she interned with the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Transportation and has served on the transit steering committee of 5^th Square, Philadelphia’s urban activist PAC, since 2019.

In 2019 Camille was part of the winning team of ITS America’s Emerging Leaders Program Global Challenge. Her team developed a transportation pricing model for Philadelphia to reduce congestion and direct funds to public transportation services. She was also recently awarded a graduate scholarship from the WTS Philadelphia chapter.

Educating, recruiting and training new workers is critical to managing our country’s infrastructure safely and efficiently. We strive to help develop a transportation workforce capable of designing and maintaining the complex transportation systems of tomorrow. Help us congratulate our 2021 UTC Student of the Year!

To learn more about the University Transportation Centers’ Student of the Year awards please click here.

December 21, 2020
Posted in What's Happening

December 21, 2020

The University of Pennsylvania’s F1Tenth Team is now a Premier Member of The Autoware Foundation  to translate development from 1/10th scale autonomous racecars to full scale autonomous vehicles. Autoware is a leading open-source autonomous driving meta-operating system that makes it easy and efficient to convert drive-by-wire vehicles into autonomous cars. Through this partnership, Autoware is focusing on racing scenarios to further its goal of autonomous vehicles for everyone.

October 30, 2020
Posted in What's Happening

October 30, 2020

Dominick Fiorentino, Carnegie Mellon University Master of Science in Public Policy and Management Candidate is interning this academic year (2020 – 2021) with the American Public Transportation Association.  His internship in the Policy Department involves work on various transit issues including mobility innovation, public-private partnerships, and mobility recovery and restoration in context of the COVID-19 pandemic (looking at each of these areas from a sustainability and equity lens).  Dominick was an active member of the CMU Transportation Club during 2019 – 2020 and through his involvement with Mobility21, was introduced to APTA (a Mobility21 UTC Deployment Partner) and secured this internship.

October 7, 2020
Posted in What's Happening

October 7, 2020

Meet Luke Lyle, a postdoctoral researcher in the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and a Swartz Center 2020 – 2021 Innovation Fellow.  He completed his MS and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at CMU and also holds a BS and BA in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Buffalo.

The focus of his doctoral research was gallium oxide, a wide bandgap semiconducting material for high power electronic applications. In these applications, gallium oxide is poised to have vastly higher efficiencies than competing materials. This material is critical for developing renewable energy technology by increasing the efficiency of power electronics in electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar cells, and batteries. He is working on commercializing this technology with the development of an industrially scalable, novel technique to grow gallium oxide aiming to leverage this material for use in renewable energy systems.

As a Swartz Innovation Fellow Luke is working with Mobility21 and the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship to commercialize this technology.

October 6, 2020
Posted in What's Happening

October 6, 2020

Mobility21 Diversity Fellow Allanté Whitmore was a panelist on The Equitable Future of Transportation seminar held by the CMU and University of Pittsburgh Local Government Club. She discussed the role of equity in transportation, next-generation transportation technologies, and local municipalities’ decision-making.

August 25, 2020
Posted in What's Happening

August 25, 2020

Mobility21’s RISS Beverley-Claire Okogwu has completed her project titled, “Development of a Multi Agent Environment Trained with MADDPG Algorithm.”  Beverley-Claire was mentored by UTC researcher Ding Zhao of the Carnegie Mellon University Safe AI Lab.  View Beverley-Claire’s poster and video.

The Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute Summer Scholars program connects students from across the country and world to contribute to robotics research alongside top CMU researchers. With 43 scholars from 11 countries and 33 home universities, the 2020 RISS cohort is the largest cohort since the inception of the program in 2006. Forty percent of the 2020 participating scholars are from communities underrepresented in STEM.

August 20, 2020
Posted in What's Happening

August 20, 2020

Mobility21’s Robotics Institute Summer Scholar (RISS) Fausto Vega has completed his project titled, “Effective Collision Avoidance for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.”  Fausto was mentored by UTC researcher, Dr. Sebastian Scherer.  View Fausto’s poster and video.

The Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute Summer Scholars program connects students from across the country and world to contribute to robotics research alongside top CMU researchers. With 43 scholars from 11 countries and 33 home universities, the 2020 RISS cohort is the largest cohort since the inception of the program in 2006. Forty percent of the 2020 participating scholars are from communities underrepresented in STEM.

July 29, 2020
Posted in What's Happening

July 29, 2020

Graduate students from Carnegie Mellon University recently met with Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) Secretary Yassmin Gramian and members of her executive team, to present a comprehensive policy study titled “Mobility, Accessibility, and Connectivity: Assessments and Recommendations Concerning Rural Transportation Equity in Pennsylvania.”

Included in the report was a review of key national findings, an analysis of rural equity as a systemic concern in Pennsylvania, strategies and practices from around the U.S., and the students’ recommendations to implement a rural transportation council.  As a first–of-its-kind rural transportation model, the council would identify research and information needs, as well as recommend and advocate for policy and program initiatives to enhance the mobility, connectivity, and accessibility of Pennsylvania’s rural communities and become a model for other states.

Roger Cohen, PennDOT’s Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary and the client for this project shared: “At a time when new technologies are dramatically redefining transportation and citizens are demanding greater accountability and responsiveness on the part of government, the student team from Carnegie Mellon looked at rural transportation services and found that there are disparities that can begin to be addressed by giving rural Pennsylvanians a greater voice in shaping the future of their communities.”

Under the guidance of Traffic21’s Executive Director and Heinz College Adjunct Associate Professor Stan Caldwell and Heinz College Distinguished Service Professor Rick Stafford, CMU graduate students Blair Chen, Erick Shiring, and Marcus Robinson of Heinz College and Ziyu Dai of the College of Engineering were able to apply their knowledge and experiences to inspire real world policy change for future progress.

Also involved in the project  was former Traffic21 Women in Transportation Fellow Ngani Ndimbie, executive policy specialist for PennDOT.  Ngani was able to advise the students from a policy standpoint, as well as provide guidance from her experience as a Heinz College graduate.

This project was supported by the Mobility21 National University Transportation Center.

For more information and detail, you can read the full report here.