ICT student spotlight: Mohammad Jalayer

Mohammad Jalayer, a doctoral candidate in the joint transportation engineering program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale/Edwardsville (SIU), was recently honored with the 2013 Top Student Paper Award at the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Midwestern District meeting in Milwaukee. His paper, “Evaluation of Remote Sensing Technologies for Collecting Roadside Feature Data to Support Highway Safety Implementation,” was part of the work he contributed to ICT project R27-116: Investigation of Methods and Appoaches for Collecting and Recording Highway Inventory Data.

In addition to assisting Professor Huaguo Zhou of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville with that project, Jalayer has assisted on two other ICT projects:

• R27-89: Illinois Highway Safety Manual Workshop
• R27-90: Investigation of Contributing Factors of Wrong-Way Driving on Freeways

Jalayer explains that he became interested in transportation engineering because of the tremendous amount of accidents that take place every day. He states, “Transportation engineering allows us to make travel easier and safer. It saves lives.” He currently serves as the president of the ITE Student Chapter at SIU, and upon graduation hopes to become a professor or a professional researcher.

He states, “Working on ICT research has provided me with an opportunity to see how my career path fits into the transportation industry and given me the tools to achieve my professionl goals.”