PacTrans News
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February 11, 2015
PacTrans at TRB Newsletter now available
Read the special issue detailing the 2015 TRB Annual Meeting here.
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February 11, 2015
Join us for the Winter PacTrans Leadership Training Seminar
If you are unable to attend in person but would still like to hear the talk, the seminar will be broadcast for live viewing. Watch the seminar online at 12:30 p.m. PST.
You can also dial in using your phone: United States (Long distance): +1 (646) 749-3122. Use Access Code: 426-795-645.
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February 9, 2015
PacTrans Newsletter – Special TRB 2015 Issue
Read the special issue of PacTrans at the 2015 TRB Annual Meeting here.
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February 2, 2015
Student Spotlight: 2015 TRB Annual Meeting
The TRB annual meeting offers one of the leading educational and professional opportunities in the transportation field, and PacTrans was proud to provide travel support for many students to attend this January. Students were invited to share about their TRB experiences with us.
Benjamin Wright
I had an amazing experience attending the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington D.C. with the support of PacTrans. As an undergraduate student, this was my first time travelling to a research conference. With over 10,000 transportation researchers and professionals in attendance, it was easy to feel overwhelmed at first by the long list of sessions available, but I made the most of it by carefully planning my schedule. TRB was an excellent opportunity to present my research work: The Impact of Incidents on the Reliability of Freeway Travel Times. I had many interesting discussions with those that visited my poster to ask questions and give feedback on my research work. The conference allowed me to sharpen my presentation and networking skills and learn from professionals and researchers from all over the world. I also attended several lecture and poster sessions on topics including travel time reliability, transportation economics, and light rail implementation. I am eager to return to this conference in the future and take further advantage of all it has to offer.
John Ash
This year marked my third visit to TRB, but my first as a student at the University of Washington. Overall, it was a great experience at which I learned a lot, saw some old friends, and met several new ones. For most of the conference, I attended workshops and lectern sessions on topics aligning with my research interests, namely traffizc safety and connected vehicles. Perhaps my favorite session was a brief lecture and discussion given by Dr. Ezra Hauer, arguably one of the most influential people in the field of traffic safety. Dr. Hauer, who is currently over the age of 80, led an interesting discussion on regression modeling to a standing-room-only audience. Additionally, I particularly enjoyed a session on new and innovative research on traffic signals. Finally, I was happy to be able to attend a session in which a paper I helped write about safety treatments for at-grade trail crossings was presented.
Besides all of the sessions at the conference itself, it was also quite fun to attend some of the receptions to talk with other students, professors, researchers, and practitioners in the field. I attended a reception hosted by my former university (the University of Wisconsin), as well as the PacTrans reception, and a reception for young professionals within industry or academia. It was great to catch up with people from Wisconsin, socialize with others from the Northwest, and meet some new people in a similar situation to me at the young professionals reception. Similar to past experiences, this year’s TRB was an excellent learning opportunity. I am very grateful to have gotten the chance to attend and am already looking forward to next year’s conference!
Wenbo Zhu
Going to the TRB Annual Meeting 2015 was really a great experience for me. During the four days, I went to different lecture and poster sessions and learned a lot about the most cutting edge research. I also learned that what we are doing at UW, including traffic platform, pedestrian sensing and big data, is actually the most promising research areas. The PacTrans reception on Monday provided a good opportunity for me to communicate with transportation professionals. In all, thanks a lot to PacTrans for funding me this travel to TRB and preparing such a wonderful reception, it helped me a lot in developing myself as a young professional.
Ruimin Ke
This is my first time attending the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting. Thanks for the support PacTrans gave me, and this is a great opportunity for me to learn more about what is going on in the most advanced transportation research fields.
At the meeting, I attended some lecture sessions, poster sessions, and company exhibitions. I think the transportation world is changing quickly. The hottest topics nowadays are connected vehicles, autonomous vehicles, and big data. In my opinion, many institutions and research groups are trying to explore in these fields but the technology as well as research methods is far from mature, which also shows the big opportunities in the near future.
I gave a lecture titled “Roadway surveillance video camera calibration using standard moving objects” about extracting information from images. In the session I presented, an interesting thing I noticed was that two out of four speakers talked about images taken from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), which probably pointed to a direction of transportation applications of image processing technology.
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January 21, 2015
PacTrans Newsletter – Issue #10 Now Available!
Read the January 2015 PacTrans newsletter here!
