The presentation was among the 51���� research in the breakout sessions at the annual Southeastern Wisconsin Transportation Symposium at 51���� on Oct. 10.

���²�’s��Institute for Physical Infrastructure and Transportation (IPIT) and WisDOT co-hosted the symposium, now in its fifth year, to bring together researchers, students and transportation professionals to showcase related research and share innovative practices.

Attendance topped last year’s with over 230 registrants from across the state and multiple disciplines, said Xiao Qin, who also is IPIT director.

IPIT currently has 34 affiliated faculty members across five colleges at 51����. There are 31 active projects addressing issues such as traffic safety, urban mobility, infrastructure preservation.

Symposium breakout sessions covered a wide range of other topics, such as:

• Artificial Intelligence in Transportation (Xiao Qin, 51����)
• From Behavior to Breakthroughs: How Technology is Shaping Safer Driving Habits (Bryan Porter, Dean, 51���� Graduate School)
• Transportation Demand Management Opportunities in the Region (Dana Shinners, Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission)
• Advancing AV/CV Readiness in Wisconsin: Panel discussion and demonstration (Xiaopeng Li, UW-Madison, and Tom Shi, 51����)

Speakers included WisDOT Secretary Kristina Boardman and Victoria Sheehan, executive director of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. 

Download the symposium presentations here.

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Lab members Muhammad Fahad and Narayan Rai were also interviewed for the segment, along with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy.

Shi’s lab has a $1.4 million slice of a larger grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to work on overcoming obstacles of putting AVs into use in rural areas where transportation options are limited. As researchers find solutions and create devices during this grant period, Shi said, those discoveries will contribute to making AVs viable everywhere.

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Schneider presented the research he and Qin are working on at the annual Southeast Wisconsin Transportation Symposium held on campus Oct. 4.

51����’s Institute for Physical Infrastructure and Transportation (IPIT) and WisDOT co-hosted the symposium, bringing together researchers, students and transportation professionals to showcase related research and share innovative practices.

Attendance for the event set a record, with more than 200 participants registered, said Qin, IPIT director and the Lawrence E. Sivak Professor in Civil & Environmental Engineering.

“This symposium carries some weight in terms of influence,” he added. “Attendees are those who collectively guide the investment strategies for WisDOT’s $4 billion annual budget.”

Is there a project you’d like to partner with IPIT on? Interdepartmental research ideas are welcomed. Contact Xiao Qin, qinx@uwm.edu

Qin and Schneider’s pedestrian fatalities project looked at two five-year time periods – 2008-2012 and 2017-2022 and sought to understand what changed to result in higher numbers of deaths in the latter period.

Data on pedestrian fatalities in the earlier period showed that fatalities in Wisconsin were fairly stable. But in the latter period, fatalities increased dramatically, spiking in 2022. Identifying the differences could lead to interventions that would reduce the death rate, Schneider said.

“Pedestrian fatalities nearly doubled nationally in the last decade and the majority are happening at night,” he said. “This not happening worldwide so we need to understand why the U.S. is an outlier.”

The ongoing work is funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation through its and WisDOT.

Qin will be doing the statistical modeling of some of these variables as a next step, including

one of the study’s findings that areas where unemployment is high was related to an increase in pedestrian fatalities.

Symposium breakout sessions covered a wide range of other topics, such as:

• The City of Milwaukee’s Vision Zero program to address fatal and severe traffic crashes
• The public’s perceptions of autonomous vehicles
• Countermeasures for preventing bridge hits
• The Wisconsin Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program from WisDOT

Speakers included C.Y. David Yang, president and executive director of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and WisDOT Secretary Kristina Boardman. The event included a “walk-shop” where participants took a tour of the new pedestrian and bicyclist facilities on the 51���� campus.

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Called the , it will serve as a link between academic research and the concrete industry. The report also featured Meraly Lopez and Hua Liu, two civil engineering graduate students from Sobolev’s Advanced Nano & Cement Laboratory.  .

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So, it isn’t surprising that Tabatabai has been interviewed by the media multiple times about the rebuilding of the Baltimore bridge.

In these stories, Tabatabai explained what distinguishes this kind of bridge. He also pointed out the widespread need to modernize physical infrastructure and the many considerations that go into deciding what kind of bridge to build at a particular site.

Globe & Mail (Canada), PDF

Baltimore Sun, PDF

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Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman attended the event as part of his OpportUWnity Tour, a statewide journey Rothman is making to each UW campus this fall. Chancellor Mark Mone also provided a welcome, thanking Rothman and the Universities of Wisconsin’s for the support and “fierce” advocacy on behalf of 51����, pointing to research as a major reason that businesses work with the university.

Read expanded story and view photo gallery.

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 (’15 MS Civil Engineering; advisor: Konstantin Sobolov) has been awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER . An assistant professor at Princeton University, this award supports his work to understand and engineer a new generation of concrete composites, inspired by naturally tough materials such as bone and mother-of-pearl, to allow more resilient and efficient infrastructure.

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. 

in this article from Princeton University.

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According to Gottlieb, “It’s a question of land use, it’s a question of connectivity, but it’s also a question of safe and efficient movement of people and goods. That’s where the tradeoff really is here, between making some improvements to the existing freeway or taking it down to grade.”

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His research found a significant reduction in serious crashes in more than two-thirds of the places where traditional intersections were replaced by roundabouts. Qin also shared that in addition to safety benefits, roundabouts also better for the environment, make traffic more efficient and ultimately cost less to maintain than other intersection types.

This story was picked up by multiple media outlets.

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The college welcomes Xiaowei (Tom) Shi as an assistant professor, civil & environmental engineering.

Shi’s research focuses on evaluating existing emerging mobility technologies, such as automated, connected, and electric vehicles, and developing novel technologies through the utilization of field experiments and hardware-in-the-loop methodologies. His research integrates transportation engineering, control engineering, optimization, and data science.

Prior to joining the 51���� faculty, Shi was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Michigan Traffic Lab at the University of Michigan.

“Tom’s expertise in these cutting-edge fields promises to enrich our department’s research and educational endeavors,” said Rani Elhajjar, associate professor and department chair, civil & environmental engineering. “We eagerly anticipate his valuable contributions to advancing our understanding and applications of transportation technologies for a smarter and more connected future in Wisconsin and beyond.”

Shi’s work has published in top transportation journals including the Transportation Science and Transportation Research Parts B, C and D. He serves as a reviewer for leading transportation journals, including Transportation Science, Transportation Research Parts B and C, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, and IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles.

Shi’s many competitive awards include the Anne Brewer Academic Scholarship from ITS Florida and the Neville A. Parker Science & Technology Award from the Council of University Transportation Centers. He was a member of the U.S. finalist team in the ITS World Congress – Global Innovation Competition.

He earned a PhD in civil and environmental engineering at the University of South Florida (2021).

Shi’s office is the Northwest Quadrant, Room 4420 and his email address is xiaowshi@uwm.edu.

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