This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award will support the establishment of a multidisciplinary graduate training program in Transportation Technology and Policy that offers a new pedagogical perspective embracing both the physical sciences and engineering and the behavioral sciences to illuminate the human side of adopting and dealing with the impacts of transportation technology. This activity is a joint effort of twenty-five scientists and engineers with backgrounds in mechanical and aeronautical engineering, statistics, management, transportation, civil and environmental engineering, chemical engineering and materials science, environmental science policy, natural resources, chemistry, and applied science. This group of scientists and engineers has established research collaborations and their collective expertise will provide the intellectual underpinning for the training of a diverse cadre of some seventy-five graduate students over the five-year tenure of the award. This IGERT activity in transportation education creates new courses, recruits non-traditional students, and offers new academic minors in traditional disciplinary departments. The anticipated outcome is an increase in the number, and in the quality of preparation, of transportation PhD's who are equipped to contribute to solving pressing and complex problems of the future. Other components of this multidisciplinary doctoral training program include fellowships, internships, seminar series, and conferences. IGERT is a new, NSF-wide program intended to facilitate the establishment of innovative, research-based graduate programs that will train a diverse group of scientists and engineers to be well-prepared to take advantage of a broad spectrum of career options. IGERT provides doctoral institutions with an opportunity to develop new, well-focussed multidisciplinary graduate programs that transcend organizational boundaries and unite faculty from several departments or institutions to establish a highly interactive, collaborative environment for both training and research. In this first year of the program, support will be provided to seventeen institutions for new or nascent programs that collectively span all areas of science and engineering supported by NSF.
