Researchers and Scholars

Numerous transportation researchers and scholars are affiliated with GTI/UTC, and work in a number of areas including asset management, design and environment, materials and construction, finance and administration, policy and planning, etc. You can contact researchers working in these areas by clicking on the + symbol under each area description and following the links to email addresses.

Asset Management

Asset management, a strategic approach for investment decision making, offers institutional resources, planning methodologies and information technology capabilities to agencies to, 1) increase the value obtained from infrastructure expenditures, 2) demonstrate accountability more clearly, 3) earn increased credibility with elected officials and their constituencies, while 4) achieving a progressively higher quality of infrastructure services for communities.

Aviation

Innovation and analysis of freight and passenger air travel demand and impacts within the transportation network is an area of interest at UTC/GTI. Developing products and tools to provide a safe, secure, efficient, and environmentally acceptable global aviation system is the purpose of this research area.

Design and Environment

Context Sensitive Solution (CSS) is a burgeoning field of study and application in Design. The objective is to develop a transportation facility that fits its physical setting and preserves scenic, aesthetic, historic, and environmental resources, while maintaining safety and mobility.

Finance and Administration

The benefits of transportation investment are often easy to see: highways open up new markets, improve accessibility, and create jobs for the American economy. The measurable impacts of these investments are less understood. Innovative Finance is a major area of concern nationally. UTC/GTI recognizes the need to find appropriate applications and viable options for its partners.

Materials and Construction

The study of innovative ways to enhance the performance and longevity of materials and construction techniques is of major interest to UTC/GTI engineers. Research on areas such as bridge coatings, asphalt concrete and asphalt binders, portland cement concrete, high-performance materials for bridge construction, and waste and byproduct materials are of vital importance to the transportation industry..

Operations, Safety, and ITS

Providing effective solutions to restore optimum highway performance during events that interrupt service: construction, maintenance, weather, natural disasters, and incident management while minimizing traffic flow disruption is the objective of Operations Research. Analyzing usage of advanced technologies like ITS is a method to achieve this goal.

Policy and Planning

Strategic planning processes provide the vehicle for identifying priorities, determining direction, key objectives, and resource requirements to integrate emerging issues and long-run trends, providing crosscutting policy initiatives.

Security, Evacuation Planning & Modeling

Securing critical infrastructure, resources and people is the goal of research in this area. Evacuation planning, secure border crossings, emergency training and response planning are areas of ongoing research.

Structures and Bridges

Structures and bridges are critical components of transportation infrastructure.  Areas of ongoing research include risk assessment and use of sensing technologies to monitor the performance of infrastructure. Construction technology and innovation in nondestructive and noninvasive applications are also prevalent areas of research.