ICT hosts the 6th International Transportation Doctoral Student Symposium

On Oct. 20–21, 2017, the Illinois Center for Transportation welcomed more than seventy transportation engineering doctoral students and advisors who gathered in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering’s Yeh Student Center to exchange knowledge, ideas, and expertise in the area of transportation systems and pavements.Originally initiated in December 2012 to foster mutual collaboration between the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Harbin Institute of Technology, the International Transportation Ph.D. Student Symposium was later expanded to include other educational institutions to allow students from all over the world to see their transportation research in a global context.

In its sixth year, hosted by the Illinois Center for Transportation, the symposium brought together internationally recognized faculty and doctoral students in the field of transportation systems and pavements from RWTH Aachen University, Germany; Harbin Institute of Technology, China; Delft University of Technology, Netherlands; Universidad de Los Andes at Bogota, Colombia; and the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, University of Pittsburg, University of California at Davis, Virginia Tech, Michigan State University, Arizona State University, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.

The topics presented this year ranged from road surface coating systems, molecular weight distribution of asphalt binders, the use of reclaimed rubberized asphalt pavement in new conventional hot mix asphalt, and the chemo-mechanics of ageing on bituminous materials to the analyses of airfield pavement rutting, digital image correlation applications, and the influence of tire-pavement thermo-mechanical interaction on rolling resistance.

The symposium’s program also featured posters sessions, where students had the opportunity to present and discuss their respective research efforts in more details and to get to know more about the research led by their peers. After reviewing all posters presented, attending faculty members voted for the best three posters and the following doctoral students received the Sixth International Transportation Ph.D. Student Symposium Awards:

Angeli Gamez: Influence of Tire-Pavement Thermo-Mechanical Interaction on Rolling Resistance (University of Illinois), First Place      

Sushobhan Sen: Assessment of the Urban Microclimatic Impact of Pavements (University of Illinois), Second Place    

Ruxin Jing: Chemo-mechanics of ageing on bituminous materials (Delft University), Third Place  

The seventh International Transportation Ph.D. Student Symposium will be hosted by Harbin Institute of Technology in China.

For more information about the International Transportation Ph.D. Student Symposium, please check the symposium’s website.