Annual Meeting 2016
STATE OF THE
CENTER
Brian Smith
MATS UTC Director
August 4, 2016
MATS UTC Mission
The Mid-Atlantic Transportation Sustainability University
Transportation Center (MATS UTC) serves the region through
applied research, education, workforce development, and
technology transfer focused on environmental sustainability
in the provision of transportation services.
Timing
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Center started August 2014
Funding expires September 2018
So we’re exactly half-way
The Center was allocated three years of
funding. Much of this has been distributed as
“base funds” to all six member universities
We have approximately $1.8M to spend on
three sets of competitive collaborative projects
We expect at least one more RFP this fall.
We have a lot more to deliver to fulfill this grant
Research
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36 projects (20 a year ago)
14 final project reports; most on MATS UTC website
32 Annual Meeting Posters
53 Investigators
40+ Students
Interdisciplinary and Collaborative
Projects funded through annual competitive
collaborative RFP or each university’s base
allocation. All monies must be fully
matched.
Current emphasis (for example,
last competitive collaborative RFP) on
two focus areas:
Urban Energy Efficiency
Coastal Infrastructure Resiliency
Education
 Semester-Long
Graduate Sustainability
Course (Offered online, asynchronously)
Fall 2015
Fall 2016
Instructors (from all
9
10
Modules
8
11 (two new half-week
Students
24
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6 consortium universities)
with new instructors)
Education (cont)
 Undergraduate
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Summer Research Program
2015: 11 students from 6 universities at 2 univ
2016: 11 students from 7 universities at 4 univ
USRIP End of Summer Symposium July 28, 2016
Webinar with all 11 presentations (4
universities)
 Web page includes all presentations, papers,
posters from 6 UVA participants:
http://www.matsutc.org/2016/07/2016undergraduate-research-end-of-summersymposium/
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Education (cont)
 Careers
in Transportation Webinars (2)
 K-12 Outreach
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Structures and materials testing modules
Career Fair participation
WV Bridge Testing
Summer and Teacher Transportation Institutes
Workforce Development
-Webinars
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Webinars concurrent with Undergraduate
Symposium and Annual Meeting
Research Webinar Series—Spring 2016
(Archived recordings available on matsutc.org )
(Details on next slide)
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Feb. MATS UTC Overview (Parkany)
Mar. Eco-Routes (Rakha); CV Fuel Cells (Wang)
Apr. ZVI and Biochar (Chiu, Imhoff, Culver); Bike
and Ped Counts (Hankey)
May Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Impacts
(Goodall, Sridhar)
June LiDAR for AQ Measurement (Elbakary,
Abdelghaffar)
You can get the presentations and archived recordings of all of these webinars at:
http://www.matsutc.org/list-of-mats-utc-webinars/
Feb 24 MATS UTC Overview, Emily Parkany, University of Virginia
Mar. 23
“Network-wide Impacts of Eco-routes and Route Choice Behavior/Evaluation of AERIS Applications”
Hesham Rakha, Virginia Tech
“Connected Vehicle Technologies for Energy Efficient Urban Transportation” Ajay Prasad, Yongqiang Wang,
and Suresh Advani, University of Delaware
April 27
“Simultaneous Removal of Nitrogen and Phosphorus from Stormwater by Zero-Valent Iron and Biochar in
Bioretention Cells” Pei Chiu, Paul Imhoff, University of Delaware, Teresa Culver, University of Virginia
“Designing Bicycle and Pedestrian Traffic Count Program to Estimate Performance Measures on Streets and
Sidewalks in Blacksburg, VA” Steven Hankey, Ralph Buehler, Virginia Tech; Andrew Mondschein, University
of Virginia
May 25
“Impact of Climate Change and Sea Level Rise on Stormwater Design and Reoccurring Flooding Problems in
the Hampton Roads Region” Jonathan Goodall, University of Virginia; Venkat Sridhar, Virginia Tech
June 22
“LiDAR for Air Quality Measurement” Khan Iftekharrudin, Mohamed Elbakary, Mecit Cetin, Old Dominion
University; Hesham Rakha, Virginia Tech
Technology Transfer
 Webinars
 Dissemination
of Final Research Reports
 Annual Meeting and Open House
 Looking for “Champions” to get excited
about certain projects and help them get
implemented/carry forward
 Project Data on MATS UTC Dataverse
Outreach/Communication
Outreach/Communication
127 Followers
19,483
Website Visits
Daily Posts
3,819
Newsletters
Sent
10,736
Outreach Emails
Sent
350 Distributed
Additional Activities
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MATS UTC Annual Meeting and Open House
Career Fairs
UVA at VDOT NoVA Career Fair
Marshall
Changes Resulting from Last
Year’s Annual Meeting Discussions
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Monthly Internal News emailed to all
researchers, Advisory Board, and Exec Team
Competitive collaborative RFP:
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Diversity emphasis in newsletter and
faculty/student profiles
Expansion of summer undergraduate research
internship program
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Provide scoring criteria to proposers
Weight agency and other “hard” match higher
than in-kind match
Tried to include VDOT/VTRC interns
Additional university hosts; joint events with all 11
at all four universities
Tech transfer that is not “one size fits all”