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Washington State University National Center for Transportation Infrastructure Durability & Life-Extension (TriDurLE)

Student Travel Grants


Waheed Uddin Student Diversity Travel Grants

In memory of Dr. Waheed Uddin, Mississippi TriDurLE site director who passed away in 2020 from COVID, TriDurLE will provide funding up to $750 per award, eight awards per year to undergraduate, graduate or professional students to enhance professional and/or academic goals and benefit diversity through attending in-person or virtual/ online activities and events. Students will be selected based on the quality and completion of the application and resume and how the travel helped to benefit or enhance diversity. Students may apply for funding approval prior to travel, or submit receipts for post-travel reimbursement.

Applications for Travel June 16, 2022 through June 15, 2023

  • These funding opportunities are available for undergraduate, graduate and professional students from TriDurLE consortium universities only who are members of a minority group (stated in the application) or who have attended a conference/workshop that benefits diversity.
  • All reimbursements will be allocated by TriDurLE and all students who apply are not guaranteed funding
  • These travel grants are for reimbursement for registration and travel associated with academic or professional work that benefits diversity.
  • Any presentations made by grantees during travel must attribute TriDurLE during their presentation. Download the TriDurLE logo
  • Grants can be disbursed to eligible student applicants post-travel, or students can apply for pre-travel authorization for funding

Travel/Conference Types

  • Conference presentations
  • Workshops
  • Professional/Career development

Eligibility

  • All TriDurLE consortium university fee-paying undergraduate, graduate and professional students at the time of application are eligible to apply for a TriDurLE travel grant. Students must be a member of a minority group OR attended a conference that benefits diversity.
  • Students are permitted to apply for more than one grant in the same cycle if they attended two events (conferences, workshops, etc.). They may be awarded partially based on available funding per travel period.

Eligible Expenses

Applicants must provide all original receipts (registration costs, travel receipts, etc.) and relevant information regarding travel for post-travel reimbursement

  • Registration fees
  • Transportation including airfare, shuttle costs, ground transportation, rental car, or personal cars per mileage
  • Airport parking
  • Lodging

Ineligible Expenses

  • Any expenses for travel companions will not be reimbursed by TriDurLE
  • Meal costs will not be reimbursed

Application Criteria

The amount awarded is based on:

  • The quality and completeness of the application
  • The diversity benefits of the activity
  • Resume

Application Materials for Post-travel Reimbursement

An application is considered complete if the submitted application form includes:

  • Stated benefits of the travel for academic/professional development
  • Advisor’s confirmation for pre-travel authorization
  • Consortium university site director’s confirmation of applicant eligibility
  • Attachment of travel receipts.
  • Resume

Tips for applying

  • When traveling, keep all original receipts and relevant information regarding your travel (This rule is applicable for 2021-22 travel)
  • You will need to scan and upload your receipts in one or two documents to attach to the application; however if you no longer have receipts for travel in 2020-21, TriDurLE allows for an exception of this rule in the application process.
  • Students may submit as many applications per application period as they wish.
  • Pay attention to the funding cap of $750 per travel event or award.

Application for Pre-travel Approval

Application Form for Post-travel Reimbursement

Webinar on Bridge Engineering: Insights into a Career as a Bridge Engineer

In celebration of Women’s History Month! Join Dr. Carmen Swanwick, a bridge engineer at the Utah Department of Transportation, as she discusses her insights into a career as a bridge engineer.
Dr. Carmen Swanwick

Carmen Swanwick, P.E., S.E
Deputy Project Development Director/Director of Construction
Utah Department of Transportation
Salt Lake City, Utah 84114
Email: cswanwick@utah.gov

Carmen Swanwick is the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) Deputy Project Development Director and Director of Construction.  Carmen served as the Department’s Chief Structural Engineer for almost ten years and has over 15 years of experience as a consultant in structural engineering within the transportation industry.  She received both her Bachelors and Masters degrees from the University of Utah in Civil/Structural Engineering.   Carmen is the AASHTO Committee on Bridges and Structures Chair and for the last six years served as the AASHTO Committee on Bridges and Structures (COBS) T-4 Committee on Construction Chair.  Carmen participates in numerous National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) projects and Transportation Research Board (TRB) Committees.  Carmen has been involved in several Department initiatives through the years including the Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC) program, development of the Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) program and recently the Digital Delivery effort with an emphasis on Building Information Modeling (BIM) for bridges and structures.

“Development and Testing of Autonomous Vehicle Technology for Transportation Infrastructure Maintenance” By Dr. XB Hu

View a Recording of This Webinar

Development and Testing of Autonomous Vehicle Technology for Transportation Infrastructure Maintenance

Mobile and slow-moving operations, such as striping, sweeping, bridge flushing, and pothole patching, are critical for efficient and safe operation of a highway transportation system. However, reducing hazards for roadway workers and achieving a safer environment for both roadway maintenance operators and the public have been a challenging problem. In 2017 alone, a total of 158,000 total crashes occurred in our nation’s work zones, accounting for 61,000 injuries. The Autonomous Truck Mounted Attenuator (ATMA) vehicle, sometimes referred to as an Autonomous Impact Protection Vehicle (AIPV), offers a promising solution to eliminate injuries to Department of Transportation (DOT) employees.

In this webinar, we will present how to use Autonomous Vehicle technology for work zone maintenance, for the purpose of protecting DOT maintenance workers from potential crashes. We will also present the evaluation methodology for the ATMA system, as well as the field-testing outcomes in Sedalia, MO. We hope this webinar will be helpful for transportation agencies that are interested in deploying similar technologies, or for academic researchers to assess characteristics of autonomous vehicles and to apply knowledge gained in transportation modeling and simulation practices.

About the Presenter

Dr. XB Hu is currently an Assistant Professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Arizona in 2013 and was a founding team member and the Director of R&D at Metropia Inc. at Tucson AZ. His research focuses on smart transportation systems, transportation big data analytics, and traffic flow and system modeling. He is supporting Missouri DOT, Colorado DOT, and a pool-fund with 12 state DOT members to test and deploy autonomous maintenance technology in the United States.

Developing Enhanced Performance Curves of ITD Asphalt Pavements by Mining the Historical Data


Project

Developing Enhanced Performance Curves of ITD Asphalt Pavements by Mining the Historical Data

Team

Xianming Shi, PI

Yong Deng, Co-PI

Description

The overarching goal of this project is to develop reliable and realistic and enhanced performance curves for ITD asphalt pavements by mining the historical data. To this end, the project has the following objectives: 1) identify the appropriate parameters and additional criteria to use in the enhanced asphalt performance curves; 2) develop and calibrate distress-specific models for forecasting future pavement conditions, for both new and rehabilitated asphalt pavements; 3) validate existing and enhanced curves using historical performance data.  This project fits into the National University Transportation Center (UTC) National Center for Transportation Infrastructure Durability & Life-Extension (TriDurLE) research thrust of “Asset management and performance management for enhanced durability and life-extension of transportation infrastructure”.

 

More Detail

Visuals

Dr. Xianming Shi

Dr. Yong Deng

Development of Multi-scale Self-healing High-volume Fly Ash UHPC


Project

Development of Multi-scale Self-healing High-volume Fly Ash UHPC

Team

Zhigang Zhang, PI
Xianming Shi, Co-PI

Description

Despite its higher initial cost than conventional concrete, ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) is gaining popularity in applications such as prefabricated connections, bridge decks, beams, girders, pile foundations, thin-wall shell structures, encasement of corroded steel girders, and encasement of substandard or corroded columns. The durability of UHPC is challenged once cracks are generated in the UHPC structural members. The high materials cost of UHPC also limits its wide application in pavement and other civil infrastructures. In this context, the overarching goal of this project is to design a cost-effective UHPC featuring the use of high volume fly ash (HVFA) binder and ability to heal the cracks when and where needed. The multiscale self-healing ability of the HVFA UHPC will be achieved through the combined use of microcapsules and light-weight aggregate (LWA), so as to maintain the superior durability of the UHPC. To this end, this exploratory laboratory investigation aims to:

1) design healing agents and multi-dimensional microcapsules and LWAs to heal cracks with different widths

2) identify cost-effective mix designs for UHPC with the use of HVFA binder

3) evaluate the self-healing effectiveness of dog-bone shape HVFA UHPC specimens, using the direct tensile test and digital image correlation technique.

The specific design of this novel UHPC is as follows. Different sizes of polymeric microcapsules (with inorganic healant) are obtained through a water-in-oil suspension polymerization technique and LWAs are encapsulated with a modified polymer coating. The healing agents incorporating a novel nano-material, graphene oxide (GO), are synthesized to improve the healing efficiency of cracked UHPC. More crystals are expected to form inside the cracks and provide comparable strength as the intact part, so that the tensile properties of cracked UHPC can be greatly recovered after self-healing.

More Detail

Visuals

Dr. Xianming Shi

Dr. Zhigang Zhang

Bayesian Network


Project

Multi-Level Resilience-Based Transportation Asset Management (TAM) Framework using Bayesian Network

Team

Ji Yun Lee, PI, Washington State University
Yue Li, PI, Case Western Reserve University
Xiong Yu, Co-PI, Case Western Reserve University

Description

This project proposes a multi-level resilience-based transportation asset management framework using Bayesian network. The framework is aimed at (a) measuring transportation network resilience at multiple management levels (e.g., project, network and enterprise levels), (b) tracking and quantifying uncertainties existing at every level so as to effectively manage uncertainties in assessing the overall network resilience, (c) determining the optimal combination of inspection/monitoring techniques based on Value of Information, and (d) providing the optimal allocation of budgets to multiple pre- and post-disaster resilience-enhancing strategies.

The project will provide decision-makers (e.g., state DOT risk managers, executives, and program and project managers) with several analytical models, including (a) component-level time-dependent reliability analysis and its updating procedure based on different types of inspection and monitoring techniques; (b) network analysis which can incorporate both the robustness of components and the adaptive capacity of a network; (c) Bayesian-network-based resilience assessment model that evaluates each resilience capacity at multiple transportation management system levels and quantifies uncertainty at every assessment stage; and (d) asset management strategies by disaggregating resilience into the three resilience capacities using backward simulation. The framework itself and such analytical models can be implemented in risk-/resilience-based transportation asset management. Moreover, this project can be extended to develop a Python interactive tool, which is designed to enable transportation agencies to understand how the research findings can be easily and successfully implemented in improving the resilience of their transportation system.

Impacts/Benefits

More Details

Visuals

Ji Yun Li, PI

Dr. Ji Yun Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Washington State University (WSU). Prior to joining WSU in 2017, Dr. Lee served as a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (2016-2017) and a Visiting Faculty in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering at the of Central Florida (2015-2016). She received her Ph.D. (2015) in Civil Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, her M.S. (2011) in Civil Engineering from Stanford University, and her B.S. (2009) in Architectural Engineering from Korea University. Her research experience and interests lie in the general field of structural reliability and risk assessment of civil infrastructure systems and supply chain network exposed to extreme events, risk-informed decision-making, and infrastructure/community resilience.