ITS Berkeley Hosts Panel/Seminar for TE Open House

April 11, 2019

Institute of Transportation Studies Berkeley (ITS), Transportation Students Organizing Committee (TRANSOC) and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering hosted 13 prospective Transportation Engineering students at the TE Open House on Friday April 5, 2019.

The open house began Thursday, April 4 with an informal dinner with faculty and current students at ​ITS Berkeley Library and an evening out in Berkeley, organized by TRANSOC.

On Friday, prospective students learned about the Transportation Engineering Program​ and sat in on round-robin table discussions with faculty and students, covering topics like UC Berkeley: what it offers with professors Mike Cassidy and Max Shen; Our Transportation Curriculum: MS, PhD, MS/MCP and more with professor Mark Hansen; the Institute of Transportation Studies and research opportunities with professors Susan Shaheen and Alex Skabardonis; and Career Paths with TRANSOC president Jayne Chang and other graduate students. The session was followed up with a student Q and A about TRANSOC and student life at Berkeley.

Prospective students were also treated to a campus tour with current students​ before meeting with faculty for the first set of​ ​office hours, followed by a Student Discussion on Navigating Funding at Berkeley.

Current and prospective students came together with faculty and visitors for a panel discussion hosted by ITS and CITRIS: TRB’s Critical Issues in Transportation: A  Research Agenda for the 21st​ Century in Banatao Auditorium with panelists Neil Pedersen, Transportation Research Board (TRB) Executive Director, alum Therese McMillan, Metropolitan Transportation Commission Executive Director and alum YuYu Zhang, associate professor at University of South Florida, moderated by professor and Transportation Sustainability Research Center Co-director Shaheen.

The discussion focused on what are the research questions that will help guide public policy and planning during the unprecedented challenges in transportation, including climate change, natural disasters, crumbling infrastructure, a shrinking highway trust fund, and uncertain roles for emerging technologies, in addition to discussing what TRB is and why it is important to the panelists as professionals and when they were students.

The panel was followed by the ITS Transportation Seminar Lagrangian & Sparse Control for Multi-Agent Dynamics & Traffic presented by Associate Provost for Research Rutgers University–Camden Bendetto Piccoli.

See our live tweets from the panel, and see photos from the day.

The day wrapped up with the second​ ​set of office hours with faculty  and a transportation engineering and city planning student mixer organized by TRANSOC and the Planning Student Association (PSA).

TRB’s Critical Issues in Transportation: A  Research Agenda for the 21st​ Century

Lagrangian & Sparse Control for Multi-Agent Dynamics & Traffic

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkeVC9wkk5Q