The University of Utah ITE student chapter has continued doing many of the activities that it has done in past years and added new projects during 2010. In December of 2010, the chapter began its reorganization, with electing new chapter officers and recruiting new members. Currently the chapter counts eleven members, ten graduate students working on transportation related research, and one undergraduate student. The three transportation faculty members, Dr. Peter Martin (student chapter advisor), and Dr. Xuesong Zhou and Dr. Richard Porter (advisors), provide full support to the chapter and actively engage in its activities. Currently the chapter makes plans of activities for 2011.
The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Utah, along with many sponsors, have been sponsoring building of a new transportation research facility (the new Utah Traffic Lab), which is under construction. All the ITE members and transportation students will be actively involved in research projects at the new lab.
The ITE student chapter has seminars once a week, where usually one of students makes a presentation about his/her research work to the rest of the group. We invite students from other departments that are interested in our research to attend, which provides more opportunities for collaboration. This practice has inspired us to share our work and ideas even more.
Some of the members will attend the 90th Annual TRB meeting in Washington, D.C. this January, where they will present their papers based on the research they are working on. They will also be attending ITE receptions organize during the conference, where they will hopefully be in a position to share their work and experience with other ITE members.
