This past week, 12 students from the Oregon State University School of Civil and Construction Engineering attended the annual Oregon Transportation Summit in Portland, hosted by the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium and Portland State University. The summit brought together Oregon’s academic and transportation professionals to advance the state of the field by accelerating new research into practice and by shaping the agenda for future research. OSU’s trip was highlighted by graduate student Jennifer Warner’s first-place finish in the Three-Minute Thesis Competition, for her presentation on “Right Hook Crash Mitigations.”
“The summit was a huge success,” OSU graduate student Rachel Vogt said. “We were able to expand our knowledge of transportation while networking with professionals and academics from across Oregon.”
The summit featured a plenary session with Sue Groth from MinnDOT, Troy Costales from Oregon Transportation Safety Division, and Leah Treat from City of Portland, all of whom discussed “Envisioning Vision Zero” or reducing the amount of traffic related incidents to zero fatalities. Their thought-provoking topics focused on the recent safety initiatives at the national, state, and local levels. Additionally, the students had the opportunity to listen to the keynote speaker, Jarrett Walker of Jarrett Walker & Associates, give a talk on the benefits of considering the rational choices surrounding public transit, and how doing so can enrich our communities and our lives.
Five of the OSU students in attendance, (Sarah McCrea, Rachel Vogt, Jennifer Warner, Julia Kautz, and Medha Jannat) presented their ongoing research projects during the student poster session. Through this session, they were able to discuss their work with the leading professionals and researchers from Oregon.
Three students, (Dylan Anderson, Jasmine Pahukula, and Jennifer Warner), participated in the Three-Minute Thesis Competition, where students had three minutes and one slide to present their research work to a panel of judges and captivate the interest of the audience.
