December 6, 2022

From November 10-11, the Center for Advanced Multimodal Mobility Solutions and Education (CAMMSE) held its Fifth Annual CAMMSE Virtual Research Symposium. We are proud to congratulate three CEE students on winning the CAMMSE Graduate Student Presentation Competition:

Sruthi Mantri, 3rd Place

Sruthi Mantri is a fourth-year Ph.D. student working with Dr. Nicholas Lownes.  Sruthi has a master’s degree from Oklahoma State University and worked as a staff engineer for 3 years before joining the Ph.D.

Her research concentration is transportation network analysis with the concept of emerging autonomous vehicle technology. Her research focuses on the impacts of autonomous vehicles on private household vehicle ownership. Her dissertation is proposing a methodology to minimize the influence of unoccupied autonomous vehicles on the delay experienced by occupied vehicles. Sruthi won a 3rd-place award in the fifth annual virtual symposium of CAMMSE, Center for Advanced Multimodal Mobility Solutions and Education, on the topic of ‘An analysis of the impacts of Autonomous Vehicles on private household vehicle ownership in the state of Connecticut.’

Quinn Packer, 2nd Place

Quinn Packer has been a Husky for all his college career. He earned his bachelor’s in civil engineering in 2020 and his master’s in civil engineering this past May. He is now a first year PhD student working with his advisor, Dr. John Ivan researching transportation safety. During the CAMMSE symposium, Quinn took home 2nd place for his presentation of his research “Pedestrian Signal Compliance Under Concurrent and Exclusive Phasing at Traffic Signals Considering Geo-Spatial Factors."

Zheng Ren, 3rd Place

Zheng Ren is a current fourth-year PhD student working with Dr Jin Zhu. His current research is focusing on improving community resilience by investigating human mobility behaviors under disasters.

Zheng won 3rd place for his presentation titled “An Enhanced Understanding of Disaster Resilience Assessment Using Points-of-interest (POI) Visit Dataset Under a Natural Disaster.”

Read more about the competition on the CAMMSE website.

December 2, 2022

William Hughes is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate studying structural engineering at the University of Connecticut Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He also received his B.S. in civil engineering from UConn in 2019. His research interests include physics-based and data-driven modeling of the resilience of communities and infrastructure, including power systems, residential buildings, and the transportation networks, to natural hazards.

The Transportation Infrastructure Durability Center (TIDC) is the 2018 US DOT Region 1 (New England) University Transportation Center (UTC) located at the University of Maine Advanced Structures and Composites Center. TIDC’s focus is on extending the life and improving the durability of transportation assets. TIDC has six member Universities within the New England Region. The mission of the Transportation Infrastructure Durability Center (TIDC) is to develop innovative, sustainable, next-generation solutions to improve the durability and extend the lifespan of existing and new transportation assets in New England and beyond. TIDC is committed to making dramatic impacts in the cost-effectiveness of transportation infrastructure through transformative research, education, outreach, workforce development, and technology transfer.

To recognize and honor students supported by the University Transportation Centers (UTC) Programs, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology sponsors an annual awards banquet each January in Washington DC. Each UTC selects one outstanding student of the year from their Center to be recognized at the banquet. The TIDC Outstanding Student of the Year is awarded $1,000 and costs for the student to attend the award ceremony and the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting in Washington DC. The decision is made based on technical merit, research capability, academic performance and leadership. The outstanding student of the year was recognized on November 30 at TIDC’s annual Student Poster Contest Award Ceremony.

William’s research with the TIDC focused on modeling of large woody debris buildup around bridges and the associated impacts on the scour and bridge safety. During storm or flooding events, trees or tree limbs can fall into rivers and collide with bridge piers. If the debris becomes entrapped, large formations can occur, which can pose a substantial threat to the bridge’s safety. Not only can the impact forces of the trees damage the bridge; the debris formations can also constrict the waterways, leading to increased water speeds which can wash away some of the foundation soils in a process known as scour. William has worked to create statistical simulations of the tree failures, debris entrapments, and resulting scour to better quantify the risk posed to the bridges under different environmental conditions. These models can then be used by decision-makers to predict the bridge failure probabilities to better inform decisions related to bridge safety, such as whether a bridge should be closed for an upcoming storm.

William comments on his gratitude to his mentors as well. "I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Wei Zhang, for nominating me and writing a letter of recommendation. His helpful mentorship has assisted me throughout the years, and this would not have been possible without him. I would also like to thank Dr. Nalini Ravishanker, who wrote an additional letter of support, and Dr. Ramesh Malla, who severed as co-PIs on the TIDC project. I would also like to thank the graduate students who helped with the research project, including Leana Santos, Qin Lu, Steven Matile, Sreeram Anantharaman, and Indrani Chattopadhyay. Finally, I would like to thank everyone who makes the TIDC and the outstanding student of the year award possible," William said.