Auburn University Institute of Transportation Engineers members shine at the 2024 SDITE annual meeting
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By Kat Bader
Auburn University’s Institute of Transportation Engineers (AUITE) students and faculty members won three awards at the Southern District Institute of Transportation Engineers (SDITE) Annual Meeting in April. The AUITE students and faculty received the Special Project Award on Traffic Safety for their project titled “Traffic Video Analysis Tool for Highway Safety Performance Evaluations.”
The winning team consisted of Huaguo Zhou, the Elton Z. and Lois G. Huff Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and ITE student chapter faculty advisor, Yang Zhou, assistant professor in computer science and software engineering and Alex Zhao, president of the ITE student chapter and civil and environmental engineering graduate research assistant.
The project aims to create a system that can automatically detect abnormal traffic movements such as wrong-way driving or illegal turns and traffic conflicts from regular traffic videos. This system will let multiple devices work together to make transportation systems smarter in a safe and private way.
Additionally, Md. Mahmud Hossain, a graduate assistant in Zhou’s research group, was honored with the Best Technical Paper and Graduate Student Paper runner-up awards.
Hossain’s paper, “Exploring Potential Critical Content of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles for Transportation Engineering Courses: A National Survey,” offers resources for redesigning transportation engineering courses to incorporate emerging knowledge on connected and autonomous vehicles.
Tonghui Li, vice president of Auburn University ITE and fellow graduate research assistant in Zhou’s group, won the Best Young Member Technical Paper Award for his paper, “Exploring Contributing Factors to Wrong-Way Driving Crash Severity: Insights from California Highway Patrol Data.”
Li’s paper looks at applied machine-learning tools and techniques to identify the crucial factors influencing severe wrong-way driving crashes, aiming to reduce the related crashes and casualties.
“Members of the Auburn University ITE demonstrated exceptional performance in the national-level competitions at the meeting, resulting in three awards,” Zhou said. “It’s no surprise that our students did well considering we have some of the brightest minds in engineering. These results testify to the work and talent doing research right here at Auburn University and the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering.”
The annual meeting began in 1952 and draws participants from academia, government and the private sector and focuses on bringing together professionals in the transportation field to network, grow professionally and exchange ideas.
Media Contact: , kmb0190@auburn.edu,
Yang Zhou, Huaguo Zhou and Alex Zhao present their Special Project Award on Traffic Safety at the Southern District Institute of Transportation Engineers.
