Penn gets $5.65M grant for transportation research

The University Transportation Center — co-directed by Penn and Carnegie Mellon University — received a grant of $5.65 million from the Department of Transportation on Saturday.

The Center received the grant after going through a very intense, competitive process, according to the press release. Located in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University, the Center — known as Technologies for Safe and Efficient Transportation — was founded in 2012 by the two universities to conduct research on transportation policy and develop cutting-edge technologies to promote driving safety and traffic efficiency.

Related: Engineering and Design schools partner with Carnegie Mellon to research transportation

“[We] investigate using information technologies to make transportation systems safer and more efficient,” Penn professor Daniel Lee said, who is co-director of the Center with Raj Rajkumar, a professor from Carnegie Mellon University.

According to the Center’s website, there are about 35,000 deaths per year on account of road accidents in the United States. The fatality rate is 8,500 deaths per year in intersections alone. In response to these statistics, the Center is developing technologies “designed to make crashes rare events rather than the normal expected events that they are today.”

Related: Car crash at 38th and Spruce

The center, which is also looking into improvements for SEPTA, has previously received a total of $6.9 million in grant money from the Department of Transportation in 2012.

“We currently have ongoing projects using the latest advances in robotics, embedded systems, computer vision and data analysis techniques for transportation-related applications in partnership with various public agencies around Philadelphia,” Lee said

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