2016 UCCONNECT Student Conference

CONFERENCE RECAP

The 2016 UCCONNECT Student Conference was held at the University of California, Riverside on February 11-12, 2016.  

The conference kicked off on Thursday, February 11th with a series of technical workshops held at the College of Engineering-Center for Environmental Research and Technology (CE-CERT).  Dr. Matthew J. Barth, director of CE-CERT and UCR associate director of UCCONNECT, welcomed the audience and introduced the workshop speakers. Topics ranged from advanced biofuels and measuring vehicle emissions to Intelligent Transportation Systems and the economics of downtown parking.  


Members of UCCONNECTS's advisory and executive committee take a break for a pose during friday's meeting.

Friday, the main day of the conference, started with UCCONNECT's annual advisory committee meeting. Matthew J. Barth and Michael Cassidy, director of UCCONNECT, thereafter provided welcoming remarks to all in attendance. That was followed by keynotes from Mark Samuelson, Acting Chief of Caltrans DRISI, and John Bulinski, Director of Caltrans District 8.


Students and faculty interact during the first poster session.

Student presentations then followed throughout the day. Five “e-posters”—60-inch televisions mounted on rolling stands— showcased the latest research from the universities attending the conference.  Students representing 8 universities attended the conference: UCSB, UCR, UCLA, UCI, UCB, CPP, UCD, and USC. 

Approximately 100 podium and poster presentations were delivered during the course of the conference.
Professor Ricardo Archilla and two students discuss research during a poster session.

During lunch, a faculty panel was held featuring UCCONNECT Executive Committee members: Kostas Goulias of UCSB, Matthew Barth of UCR, Brian Taylor of UCLA, Stephen Ritchie of UCI, and Michael Cassidy of UCB. The panel was moderated by the student organizers of the conference: David Kari, Xuewei Qi, and Nigel Williams.


Professor Matt Barth flanked by the conference organizing committee.

The panelists offered their perspectives on how Intelligent Vehicles might change the future of transportation, and answered questions such as “If you were selected as the next Secretary of Transportation, or the next head of FHWA, what would be your first act or top priority?”

After lunch, the poster sessions continued together with podium presentations in various rooms of UCR’s Highlander Union Building (HUB). The podium sessions were grouped by themes such as: Emerging Intelligent Vehicle Technologies, Urban Mobility Case Studies, and ITS Traffic Simulation.

The Mel Webber Memorial Lecture was given during dinner by Dr. Umit Ozguner of Ohio State University, a veteran of Intelligent Vehicle research. The title of his talk was “Crash Imminent Safety: How Intelligent Vehicles will deal with all those Human Drivers”.
Professor Umit Ozguner delivers the Mel Webber lecture.

 

At the close of the evening several awards were presented for the best poster presentations and the best podium presentations.

  • 1st place poster: Aysha Cohen, UCLA, “Equity in Motion: Capital Bikeshare in Low-Income Communities”
  • 2nd place poster: Anupam Srivastava, UCI, “A lane changing Cell Transmission Model for modeling capacity drop at lane drop bottlenecks”
  • 3rd place poster: Jasmin Kim, UCLA, “Measuring the Influences of Traffic Control Devices and Transit Stops on Pedestrian-Automobile Collisions”
  • 1st place podium: Abigail Cochran, UCB, “Impacts of Transmetro BRT in Barranquilla, Colombia: A qualitative perspective”
  • 2nd place podium: Roger Lloret-Battle, UCI, “Envy-free intersection control with value of time heterogeneity”
  • 3rd place podium: Neda Masoud, UCI, “Autonomous or Driver-less Vehicles: Implementation Strategies and Operational Concerns”   

Student reimbursement

To help alleviate the costs of attendance, UCCONNECT will reimburse student presenters with (i) the conference registration cost, (ii) 75$ per hotel night (up to two nights), and up to $50 for additional travel costs. Students who attended the conference but did not present will be reimbursed up to $100.

In order to process your reimbursement, please proceed as follows:

  1. Please go to the following link and fill out the domestic travel reimbursement form and sign: https://csstravelform.berkeley.edu/ (please make sure to return the document as a pdf)
  2. Return the form to madonna@berkeley.edu with a copy to maribelh@berkeley.edu with the following attachments:
  • Transportation: airfare receipt, itinerary, and boarding pass; rental car receipt; public transportation receipts; and associated parking costs
  • Lodging: hotel receipts
  • Conference: registration confirmation receipt and conference agenda

Upon receipt of these documents your reimbursement will be processed as quickly as possible. Remittance typically takes about 2-3 weeks after being entered into the system. Contact Madonna Camel at madonna@berkeley.edu or 510-642-0913 if you have any questions.