Welcome to the Center for Transportation and Materials Engineering at Youngstown State University.

 

Students at the scanning electron microscope.	Student viewing a metal sample on the metallograph.	Nuts and bolts made on the 3D printer are infiltrated by a student.

 

 

New Transportation Center Established at YSU

The Center for Transportation and Materials Engineering [CTME] at YSU was established in late 2006 as a result of funding received from the United States Department of Transportation [DOT].  The funding, on the order of approximately $500,000 per year for four years was included in the 2005 Federal Transportation Efficiency Act of the 21st Century.  That legislation authorized the U.S. DOT to fund 22 Tier II University Transportation Centers [UTCs] throughout the nation.   Youngstown State University was one of the four sites selected in Ohio; the other three are Cleveland State University, the University of Akron, and the University of Toledo.

The Research and Innovative Technology Administrative [RITA] division of the U.S. DOT manages the UTC program and established the guidelines and regulations via which these Centers are authorized and administered.  Specifically, in March of 2006, three documents were distributed to current and new Centers.  The first of these, “Instructions for Preparing a University Transportation Center UTC Strategic Plan,” was critical in the establishment of the Center.   Prior to the official establishment and operation of the Center, the Strategic Plan had to be approved by RITA.

Here at YSU, as a new Center, we submitted the first version of our Strategic Plan in early 2007, and received official notification of its approval from RITA on November 1st, 2007.

 

Message from the Director,
Dr. Cynthia S. Hirtzel

Overall, the Mission of the UTC program, and of each individual Center such as ours, is “To advance U.S. technology and expertise in the many disciplines comprising transportation through the mechanisms of education, research and technology transfer at university based centers.”  [Source:  “Instructions for Preparing a UTC Strategic,” U.S. DOT Research and Innovative Technology Administration, 3/06]

The theme of the University Transportation Center (UTC) at Youngstown State University (YSU) is:

“Transportation:    Mobility, Longevity, and Sustainability.”

We have chosen this theme to respond to the national strategy for surface transportation as delineated in the U.S. DOT Strategic Plan and the U.S. DOT Research, Development, and Technology Plan.  Building on YSU’s established expertise in the areas of materials research and engineering for infrastructure enables the Center to focus its efforts on applied research and applications through the use of materials engineering and increases and innovations in advanced manufacturing of materials to increase the longevity, mobility, and sustainability of the Nation’s Transportation Infrastructure.  The YSU CTME is partnership driven and includes students, faculty, stakeholders, and transportation and transit agencies and organizations.  All of our efforts at the YSU CTME will address the goals of the UTC Program through research, education, and technology transfer activities.
We will focus our efforts on four multi-disciplinary areas: planning, workforce development, and outreach; infrastructure/construction technology applications; sustainability and the environment; and materials technology applications.

The area of planning, workforce development, and outreach primarily entails understanding and anticipating the impact of multimodal transportation operations and management research, including implementation of the research results by the transportation industry and developing new education initiatives to enhance workforce development and outreach in the transportation workforce.

The area of infrastructure/construction technology applications entails planning for and implementation of new technology in infrastructure renewal and construction technology to focus on increasing the longevity of our nation’s transportation infrastructure and maintaining traffic flow through construction work areas.

Sustainability of the environment entails understanding and implementing research applications to develop sustainable designs with minimal environmental and ecological impact on the transportation corridors and the surrounding population.    

Materials technology and applications entails developing a research component, both basic and applied, to identify new materials and new applications for materials / manufacturing processes for use in all modes of the transportation industry. 

Additionally, CTME has continued to refine its focus on applications of our programs and research outcomes in the areas of transportation.  For example, we are focusing on: application to development of lighter-weight, more fuel efficient vehicles (including cars, trucks, trains, planes, and other modes of transportation); application of our work to focus on increasing the longevity of our nation’s transportation infrastructure; improved bridge safety and protecting them from terrorist (or other) attack; improvement of pavement-bridge interfaces.
In addition, over the longer time frame of the Center’s existence, other areas of research and applied research will include the following: transportation safety performance systems; how to use information technology to better manage the transportation infrastructure of the nation; how to cope with the growing demand for increasing global transportation; including, e.g., what is the best and most efficient mix of use of different modes of transportation for particular scenarios; the ‘green’ side of the nation’s transportation system (e.g., sustainability; use of recycled/recyclable materials); pavement research;  “green” vehicles; human factors; safety.

Our expansion into other areas specific to transportation from the civil and construction engineering and technology perspectives can have profound impact on the transportation infrastructure and industry, potential research areas, and their relevance to the increasing challenges and issues faced by the transportation industry.

 

 

 

Strategic Highway Research Program 2 Second Annual Safety Symposium

 

© ©2007 Center for Transportation and Materials Engineering
College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
Youngstown State University, Youngstown, OH 44555