Category: Featured

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., Research & Communications, UFTI The connection between transportation and people’s lives is what sparked Shangkun Jiang’s interest in transportation engineering. “Transportation affects how people commute, access resources, and respond during emergencies,” Jiang said. “I became especially interested in this field when I started working with mobility data to study evacuation […]

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., Research & Communications, UFTI Our roads are more fragile than we think.  Heavy rain, landslides, and even social unrest can all disrupt the services roads provide.  What happens when an entire region is cut off with no alternate route? Trucks stall, food supply shrinks, and communities are trapped. The effects […]

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., Research & Communications, UFTI When major disruptions occur around the world, most people worry about rising food and gas prices or their favorite products from other countries becoming more expensive or harder to find. But those disruptions can also affect things people may not even think about, such as roads, […]

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., Research/Communications Coordinator, UFTI He almost became an architect. Instead, Benito Pérez became what one mentor called a “social architect” — someone focused not just on buildings, but on how people move through and experience their communities. Today, Pérez serves as the Section Chief for Transit Capital Statewide at the Illinois […]

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., Research/Communications Coordinator Autonomous vehicles (AVs) use a range of sensors to understand and navigate their environment. They use cameras and other technologies to detect the positions and distances of nearby vehicles, pedestrians, animals and road objects, allowing them to drive safely on our streets and highways. But what happens when […]

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., Research/Communications Coordinator How can a city run a better and more reliable transit service that people feel comfortable using? That is the question at the center of Duanya Lyu’s doctoral research in transportation engineering at the University of Florida. “At UF, all of my research centers around one big question: […]

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., Research/Communications Coordinator Transportation research is most meaningful when it leads to solutions that benefit society.  For Wei Sun, that mindset, further reinforced during graduate school, has shaped much of his career. “The best solution is not necessarily the most complex or sophisticated one,” he said. “It is the one that […]

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., Research/Communications Coordinator, UFTI The UF Institute of Transportation Engineers (UFITE) student chapter has won the Florida Puerto Rico ITE (FLPRITE) District Traffic Bowl competition once again, marking an exciting eight-year consecutive winning streak that speaks to the quality of its students and transportation program. “It feels so surreal to stand […]

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., Research/Communications Coordinator, UFTI From a small town in southwestern Puerto Rico to supporting the contracting and partnering of engineering and architectural firms with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Miguel Lugo, a UF alumnus, has carved out a path focused on transportation and public service. “Transportation infrastructure is vital to […]

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., Research/Communications Coordinator, UFTI Industry networking and collaborative events, internship panels and general body meetings, leadership development workshops and student socials – these are just a few of the many ways that UF’s WTS Gator Student Chapter is preparing students to succeed outside of the classroom.  “I believe our continued success […]