Category: Research and Innovation

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 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, 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 Albraa Rajkhan, doctoral candidate, UF Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Most new cars today are equipped with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and many drivers rely on them every day. But not understanding how this technology works has become a growing safety concern. A new research project is studying the safety risks that […]

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., Research/Communications Coordinator, UFTI Transportation is truly interdisciplinary, combining engineering with data science, public policy, human behavior, and more. For Ally Recalde, a first-year doctoral student in the UF Department of Civil Engineering, that blending of disciplines felt like the best place to put her geography skills to work. “Geography and […]

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., Research/Communications Coordinator, UFTI Meet Sophia. Sophia is a fictitious character created to help illustrate a typical commuter and transit rider. She lives in a large city. Her morning commute includes riding an e-scooter to the nearest subway station, stopping to buy a cup of coffee and catching the subway to […]

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., Research/Communications Coordinator, UFTI Congratulations to Renan Favero for winning the Daniel B. Fambro Student Paper Award at the Florida-Puerto Rico Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) District Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida, on August 12, 2025. Renan Favero is a doctoral student in transportation engineering, conducting research on autonomous shuttles. “This […]