The Computational Transportation Science (CTS) program, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, is a multidisciplinary program focusing on the Information Technology aspects of Transportation Science. Comprised of members from the departments of Computer Science, Urban Planning and Policy, Civil and Materials Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, and Information and Decision Sciences, the program is using course-work, seminars, research projects, and development of an Intelligent Traveler Assistant (ITA) experimental prototype to introduce a new generation of researchers to emergent issues in the transportation sciences. Research partners in the CTS program include the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, the Chicago Transit Authority, the Regional Transportation Authority, the Illinois Department of Transportation, Argonne National Laboratory, and Motorola, among others.
The program provides two-year fellowships to selected Ph D. candidates in the programs noted above. A wide variety of course work is required of these students, in some cases to provide a common point of reference for topics germane to the overall program goals (such as "Principles of Computational Transportation Science", co-taught by Dr. Piyushimita (Vonu) Thakuriah of the Urban Transportation Center and Dr. Ouri Wolfson of Computer Science) and in other cases to ensure that students have the relevant background knowledge to understand the environment in which transportation decisions are made (such as "Introduction to Urban Transportation", taught by Dr. Kazuya Kawamura, or "Advanced Modeling and Data Analysis in Transportation", taught by Dr. Kouros Mohammadian). Participation in these and other required courses helps the students gain a common vocabulary and the ability to understand how their research fits into the overall structure of the CTS program.
As part of the practical application of the CTS program, fellows and researchers are developing technologies in which sensors, travelers' computers (e.g., PDAs), in-vehicle computers, and computers in the static infrastructure are integrated into a collaborative environment. The envisioned technologies will enable solutions to transportation problems ranging from dynamic ride-sharing, real-time multi-modal routing and navigation, to autonomous/assisted driving, to inferring travel patterns via data mining. In recognition that in the transportation realm policy may be as important as technology, participants are also investigating how emerging technologies may be adopted as well as the implications of their adoption to the larger transportation policy environment.