'At the top of their lists': State officials abuzz over STII

It was just another day at the office for Angeli Gamez, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering doctoral candidate, when her seemingly ho-hum day turned into something quite spectacular. 

“Professor (Imad) Al-Qadi recently invited me to become part of STII (Smart Transportation Infrastructure Initiative),” Thanks to the Village of Rantoul’s push to bring the Illinois Automated and Connected Track to the capital, Gamez was on the road to Springfield in fewer than 24 hours to meet with state senators and representatives at the Illinois State Capitol.

“I volunteered, but I was pretty anxious,” Gamez said of her first time championing an Illinois Center for Transportation research initiative to elected officials. “I am very familiar with conferences, talking with the same people in the relatively same field, but this was a whole new arena.”

While the legislative concept was new for her, Gamez was up for the challenge. She and other members of the Champaign County First, a countywide initiative which identifies potential projects that will significantly impact the economy and citizens’ quality of life, shared important initiatives with elected officials earlier in March.

Thirteen initiatives were on the agenda, spanning high speed rail projects, interstate interchange redevelopment, bike trails, and more.

“The idea is that they (Champaign County First) would search for proposals from the different villages and city governments (and hear) what ideas they wanted to champion from each of their corresponding agencies and (then) they select from that,” Gamez said. “From there, they narrowed down the list to the ones that they think would be beneficial to Champaign County as a whole.”

The capitol building was abuzz when Gamez presented STII, which aims to fund a research testing arena for high-speed connected and autonomous freight and multimodal shared mobility near ICT’s current facility on the decommissioned Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul.

“After I gave my spiel, they were very frank that they are excited about it ― it’s at the top of their lists,” Gamez said. “I think they value the vision that we’re bringing forward because it’s not only beneficial to UIUC and to our academic partners with Northwestern University and the University of Illinois Chicago, but to the state as a whole. (It’s) incorporating government, academic, and private entities altogether, and we’re spearheading to establish the testing arena for everyone to get involved.”

Gamez spoke with Sen. Scott Bennett (D-Champaign) and Rep. Mike Marron (R-Fithian), as well as Brad Tietz, director of Legislative Affairs at the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, and Paul Loete, director of the Office of Highways Project Implementation at the Illinois Department of Transportation.

“They’re excited,” Gamez said. “Brad Tietz, the DCEO director of Legislative Affairs, mentioned that DCEO director Erin Guthrie, is highly aware of I-ACT, so it seems like our reach is picking up momentum.”

Gamez’s day in the capitol put ICT in the forefront of key community leaders’ minds.

“It puts ICT on the map in terms of the community being aware of what we’re about, because not only do we want to share ICT’s success as partner of IDOT but (also) the community we’re serving,” Gamez said. “What we’re doing (in Rantoul) is not going to be constrained within the testing arena limits, but we are aiming to pursue safe deployment and integration within our statewide community and globally, hopefully.”

The visit also allowed Gamez to showcase ICT’s strengths as a leading transportation research facility for the state.

“It’s nice for elected officials to be aware if they have topics or agendas they’re championing that there’s an entity like ICT that can make that happen and do that well,” she said.

The enormity of such an opportunity to share ICT’s goals was not lost on Gamez.

“Getting such a unique opportunity helps me a lot because moving forward in the future, my plan is to go into academia,” Gamez said. “(In the future), I will also have to champion my own ideas to funding agencies or maybe to other collaborators or maybe to potential groups that have never heard of the research that I would want to do in the future.”

Perhaps her favorite part of the visit was when Sen. Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet) gathered all of the attendees inside the Senate chamber, where the members of the General Assembly cast their votes.

“He (Sen. Rose) pointed to where (former) President (Barack) Obama sat,” Gamez said of Obama’s stent as an Illinois senator. “I only see that room on television, so it was quite a cool experience.”

While the opportunity is one Gamez says “isn’t in the graduate student handbook,” it’s a day she’ll never forget.

“In the end, I was really excited to take on this opportunity,” Gamez said. “This is not something that happens every day. I was happy to be part of a progressive-thinking team at ICT and glad to share STII with so many key elected officials.”