pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

In October of this year, the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium hosted its annual Region 10 Student Conference, which attracted more than 40 participants to join in-person at University of Washington’s Seattle campus. For the first time in three years, students from universities across the region were able to meet their peers in person at this great event. This year’s program featured multiple industry talks and sought to encourage out-of-the-box thinking.

The student conference was generously supported by three external sponsors, in addition to the PacTrans center: Wejo Data Services Inc., DKS Associates, and Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) WA Section. Their willingness to advance students in transportation studies and careers supported all stages and sections of the event. Students were provided the opportunity to tour UW campus, have local Seattle breakfast, listen to professional talks, and present their research for poster awards.

There were four excellent speakers who joined us in person and shared their interesting research/project experiences. The first speaker was Professor Yao-Jan Wu from the University of Arizona, who runs the Center for Applied Transportation Sciences (CATS). Dr. Wu introduced research at his center, collaborations with local agencies, his PhD life at UW, and how it feels like as a professor. It was a very engaging talk! The second presentation was by Brian Kellogg, from DKS Associates. Brian broadly shared his thoughts on what transportation consulting is as a job, by walking through several projects he had worked on. The third speaker is Dr. Shushman Choudhury from Lacuna Technologies. As Lacuna has strong collaboration with Port of Seattle and the Urban Freight Lab here at UW, Dr. Shushman introduced how they evaluated the efficacy of variable massage signs in balancing SeaTac Airport’s arrival and departure traffic. The last speaker was Imara Galaz from Wejo, a major connected vehicle data vendor in the US. Imara shared Wejo’s product overviews and some interesting cases where Wejo data is transforming traffic management.

After the presentations concluded, student participants had an opportunity to stretch their legs during a brief campus tour hosted by Sam Ricord, a graduate research assistant at the UW. Stories were told of the UW fountain, Red Square, as well as the Quad. This year’s poster competition featured student work from five different UTC-participating universities. Chenxi Liu from UW and Mohamed Elshazli from Univ of Idaho won the first places; Namu Timilsina from Oregon State Univ secured the runner-up; and Zarak Kasi (OSU) received the third place.

A special thanks to this year’s planning committee, which included Shuyi Yin (chair, University of Washington), Sam Ricord (University of Washington), Peter Yu (University of Washington), Wisnu Sugiarto (Washington State University), Jane Webber (Oregon State University), and Jade Williams (University of Idaho). We also want to thank staff at PacTrans equally for their great support: Cole Kopca and Melanie Paredes.

Finally, a huge thank you to all student presenters and attendees for participating in this event and making it a great experience for all!