Winter 2019

On behalf of all of us at the Maryland Transportation institute (MTI), I’d like to wish you a joyous holiday season and much success in 2020.

This month marks a milestone for MTI: we’re celebrating the first full year of operations since our official launch in 2018. It has been a busy, productive and groundbreaking year for us, and for the transportation field in general.

Issues such as congestion, safety, mobility and access, economic development and environmental impact continue to loom large in the minds of policymakers, as well as the general public. Meanwhile, interest continues to grow in the potential for machine-based solutions, including artificial intelligence and automation.

We are also seeing sustained interest in data—that is, in the ability to collect, curate, analyze, and leverage more information than ever before about transportation systems and travel behavior.

MTI is at the nexus of these emerging developments. As part of the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering and with affiliated faculty and research centers in ten UMD colleges, we are actively involved in applying data science and computing technology to address transportation needs, from smart signals and automated driving to a better understanding of how people and goods move across the country.

Together, we’ve achieved much this year. Highlights include:

• Our first series of Seed Grants, supporting interdisciplinary research on topics such as the use of social media and mobile app data to analyze travel behavior, application of Bayesian statistics, and deep reinforcement learning for rideshare dispatch 
• Completion of the first-ever national database of major highway projects, allowing at-a-glance comparison of outcomes
• Official launch of incenTrip, an app that “nudges” travel behavior through rewards
• A bi-campus Transportation and Health workshop designed to foster collaborative research at UMD and UMB and to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries in Maryland and beyond
• A Distinguished Seminar Series that connects key federal and state stakeholders with faculty and students at UMD

And we’ll be even more active in 2020, with a new round of Seed Grants and other initiatives slated for launch early in the year. 

But we’re only as good as our people. To our research faculty affiliates, post-docs, students, and staff, I would like to express my thanks for your dedication to improving the ways in which Marylanders—and humans across the globe—get to the places they need to be. And to the many stakeholders, from government to industry, who are supporting this effort, let me also express my appreciation. Together, we are bringing about needed changes that enhance the quality of life for all of us.

Best regards,

Lei Zhang, PhD
Herbert Rabin Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Director, Maryland Transportation Institute