This grants supports the next generation of researchers in transportation science and logistics by providing funding for graduate students to travel to the INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics Society Conference being held in May 2020. The grant contributes to the prosperity and welfare of the nation, since the participating students will be the next generation researchers who solve the future's transportation and logistics challenges. The field of transportation and logistics is constantly changing. Efforts by retailors Amazon, Walmart, and Target, and meal delivery services such as GrubHub and UberEats, have dramatically increased home deliveries and along with it increased urban congestion and pollution. Further, a rapidly aging population will require new transportation practices, while changes in long term environmental conditions may require redesigned traffic flows and infrastructure. At the same time, new technologies, such as autonomous vehicles and drones, offer innovative opportunities to solving these challenges. Attending this conference will give students the chance to both develop their own research through feedback from other academics and to also learn about the cutting edge work being done by others. Removing barriers to attendance by providing funds for travel means that a broad and diverse group of students will be able to attend, thus in turn developing a diverse set of future researchers.
The INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics Society's Triennial Conference seeks to be the premier North American conference for academics and practitioners who are addressing the challenges and opportunities in transportation and logistics. Specifically, the conference focuses on the application of optimization methods to transportation and logistics problems. In addition, the purpose of the conference is to "provide a regular, high-quality, and reasonably affordable conference in an easily accessible location in North America that serves the broad research interests of the transportation science and logistics community with an emphasis on promoting new and impactful areas of research." As participants, the graduate students will have a chance to present their work and see the presentations of other scholars. In addition, the students will have a chance to build their network of scholars in similar research areas, helping to increase the quality of their work. The application and selection process will seek applicants capable of high quality research who might not otherwise be able to attend the conference.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
