Computational Transportation Science

We are a new multidisciplinary doctoral training program at the University of Illinois at Chicago educating specialists in the information technology aspects of transportation science. Our Computational Transportation Science (CTS) fellows are developing technologies in which sensors, travelers computers (e.g., PDAs), in-vehicle computers, and computers in the static infrastructure are integrated into a collaborative environment. They are also investigating how these technologies are adopted as well as the implications of their adoption. The envisioned environment will enable solutions to transportation problems ranging from dynamic ride-sharing, real-time multi-modal routing and navigation, to autonomous/assisted driving, to inferring travel patterns via data mining.

CTS is funded by the National Science Foundation via an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) grant. The grant provides two-year IGERT fellowships to 25-30 Ph.D. students over a five-year period, as well as supporting a new curriculum and internship training for students.

The main components of the CTS program are course-work, research projects, and development of the Intelligent Traveler Assistant (ITA) experimental prototype that demonstrates the research results. Some of the research projects and the prototype will be done in collaboration with our partners through internships.

Our IGERT fellows are selected from Ph.D. students in the following five core departments:

These departments reside in the colleges of Engineering, Business, and Urban Planning and Public Affairs.

Integral to CTS is the participation of several research partners: