New York University Launches Transportation Consortium in Brooklyn

A research consortium led by the New York University (NYU) Tandon School of Engineering has been selected by The U.S. Department of Transportation to become a Tier 1 University Transportation Center (UTC). As the winner of the DOT’s ‘Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act’ competition, the new center will receive a five-year, $7 million grant that will be supplemented with matching funds, bringing its budget to $10.5 million for the next five years.

The consortium is led by Kaan Ozbay, a professor at NYU, and includes the University of Washington at Seattle, University of Texas El Paso, Rutgers University, and the City University of New York.

The new center, ‘Connected Cities for Smart Mobility toward Accessible and Resilient Transportation (C2SMART), will examine a number of  challenges in urban mobility, including smart-parking apps, improving resiliency during times of crisis, and exploring how drones can supplement information gathered by stationary sensors. Along with research, C2SMART will focus on education, workforce development, and accelerating technology from the research phase to the real world.

“We are excited to announce this vital urban research initiative – an example of other major research centers that NYU Tandon will be launching in Downtown Brooklyn,” said NYU Dean Katepalli R. Sreenivasan. “As one of the great cities of the world, New York provides an ideal laboratory to develop research that can help transportation decision-makers create better lives for citizens. We are confident that this center will provide major impetus to advancing several forms of transportation technologies and to positively impacting the lives of nearly every person in cities of various sizes around the United States.”