Tag: transportation

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 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 […]

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., Research/Communications Coordinator, UFTI Two-lane roads were the main source of transportation infrastructure on Lesvos, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, where Dimitra Michalaka was born. At age 12, while traveling through Italy with her family, she remembers sitting at the back of a tour bus, watching how bridges crossed […]

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., UFTI Research/Communications Coordinator Amanda Carpenter, Stacy Hill, and Daniel Soto each came to the Transportation Leadership program from very different careers within the transportation industry, representing areas such as construction, policy, and consulting. In December 2025, the students graduated with master’s degrees in civil engineering, specializing in transportation leadership, demonstrating […]

By Ines Aviles-Spadoni, M.S., M.A., Research/Communications Coordinator, UFTI Alexandra Kondyli, Ph.D., professor of transportation engineering at the University of Kansas (KU), has always been fascinated by how transportation influences how people move, live, and connect. That interest solidified toward the end of her undergraduate years, when she became interested in measuring and understanding the ever-changing […]

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 […]