Carnegie Mellon University
March 30, 2012

Press Release: Carnegie Mellon's Raj Rajkumar Named to Prestigious U.S. Transportation Advisory Committee for Smart Highways

Rajkumar Selected for Pioneering Work in Technically Advanced Transportation Systems

Contact: Chriss Swaney / 412-268-5776 / swaney@andrew.cmu.edu

RajkumarPITTSBURGH—The U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has named Carnegie Mellon University's Raj Rajkumar to the Intelligent Systems Program Advisory Committee (ITSPAC).

"This is a great honor for me as my research team works to develop and implement technologies for improving the safety and efficiency of transportation," said Rajkumar, the George Westinghouse Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of the University Transportation Center (UTC), a new innovative transportation research initiative with the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science that is funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The ITSPAC acts in an advisory capacity to the secretary of transportation on matters relating to the study and development of intelligent transportation systems in the United States.

"State-of-the-art computing and communication technologies can significantly advance the safety and efficiency of transportation, since extending the physical infrastructure is both expensive and limited by existing road layouts," said Rajkumar, an expert in smart systems for vehicles and highways.  

Members of this select committee make recommendations on intelligent systems (ITS) strategic planning and review proposed areas of research funding to determine whether research activities are likely to advance the state-of-the-art and be deployed to users. The committee also makes recommendations regarding governmental and private sector roles in funding ITS-related research initiatives.

Already, Rajkumar is working in the areas of vehicular information technologies, autonomous vehicles that drive themselves and vehicular networks.

Carnegie Mellon's transportation research also includes work under way by Traffic 21, a multidisciplinary research team working to design and deploy information and communications for safer and more economic transportation solutions that could ultimately save more than 30,000 lives lost each year in traffic accidents in the U.S.

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Pictured above is Raj Rajkumar, the George Westinghouse Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of the University Transportation Center, to the Intelligent Systems Program Advisory Committee.