NUTC-Progress-Report_2020-2023

As Northwestern University Transportation Center (NUTC) looks to the future, we must retain the essential features of transportation research, outreach, and educational programming while recognizing the evolving industry focus in light of new technologies, markets and societal concerns

This report reflects the reality of transformative change in the transportation industry, as well as within NUTC Further, the collaborations and initiatives NUTC continues to pursue will benefit the greater goal of maintaining global recognition as a primary hub for the generation, dissemination, and implementation of new transportation-related knowledge

Northwestern University Transportation Center (NUTC) has been recognized as a leading interdisciplinary education and research institution since 1954, dedicated to improving systems for the movement of materials, people, energy, and information.

Director’s Letter

Hani S . Mahmassani

Reflections

on Resilience

In reflecting on the unprecedented challenges that have defined the past couple of years, one word encapsulates the essence of our collective experience: resilience. The global pandemic, with its disruptions, shortages, and crises, thrust supply chains to the forefront of public consciousness. Yet, amidst these trials, it is the remarkable resilience of our transportation systems, supply chains, organizations, and our Transportation Center itself, that stands out most vividly.

In the face of adversity, we witnessed a remarkable transformation driven by digital technologies. Connected systems, visibility technologies, and collaborative platforms took center stage, enabling us to adapt and deliver at an unprecedented scale. The sudden shift to remote work, a change once deemed improbable, unfolded with remarkable efficacy and speed, a testament to human ingenuity and the power of technology.

When the world appeared to grind to a halt, NUTC embraced the challenge head-on. We initiated a highly successful series of thirteen weekly virtual roundtable discussions with industry leaders, focused on the state of supply chains and logistics, and the subsequent reopening of cities. Embracing communication platforms that were unfamiliar to most in the pre-pandemic era, we learned to connect with a broader audience, transcending geographical boundaries.

However, transportation remains fundamentally about the physical movement of people and goods. But the economic and social activity patterns shaping the demand for transportation have continued to experience shifts of varying magnitudes, both influenced and enabled by digital technologies. From the so-called “future of work”, to the growing role of eCommerce, the ability to engage in a variety of activities in hybrid modes through telemobility is shaping the “next normal” our transportation and mobility systems are intended to serve.

Our dynamic research program, guided by a steadfast commitment to addressing the most critical issues in transportation, continues to be a beacon of adaptability and innovation.

As we navigated the complexities of supply chain disruptions, we also delved into the transformative realm of autonomous vehicles, urban mobility, resilience, and sustainability. Through these endeavors, we are not merely responding to challenges, but actively shaping the future of transportation.

The pages of this progress report feature the excitement and dynamism of our research, faculty and students, and the critical contribution of our industry partners to the resilience of our community.

Hani S. Mahmassani William A Patterson Distinguished Chair in Transportation; Director, Transportation Center Northwestern University

NUTC Dissertation Year Fellows (DYF) and Greenbriar Undergraduate Fellows

PhD and MS Candidates enrolled in the Transportation Systems Planning & Analysis Degree Program

Academic and Special Interest Seminars

NUTC Faculty Affiliates

New Business Advisory Council (BAC) member companies and representatives

Years of commitment to furthering transportation and logistics research, as well as industry collaboration 16 35 50+ 59 20+

Collaboration and Connections Highlights

Regional and National Conferences and Committees

Ann Drake, Founder & President, Lincoln Road Enterprises, delivered the 39th Annual William A. Patterson Distinguished Transportation Lecture, “Beyond Transportation Excellence: Lessons from the Pandemic.”

Ed Bastian, CEO, Delta Air Lines, delivered the 40th Annual William A. Patterson Distinguished Transportation Lecture, “Leadership and Air Travel Through the Pandemic and Beyond.”

Roger Nober, EVP and Chief Legal Officer, BNSF Railway delivered the fall 2022 distinguished lecture, “How Public Policy Affects Freight Capacity – Lessons Learned From the Public and Private Sectors.”

Pablo Durango-Cohen, Organizing Committee Chair, hosted SIAM4 or SIAM 2022 - the 4th International Symposium on Infrastructure Asset Management – in June 2022.

Hani Mahmassani gave keynote lectures at:

• ASCE T&DI Workshop: Artificial Intelligence for Next Generation Transportation (2021).

• Transformative Technologies in Transport Workshop at The World Bank (2021).

• Alliance of Midwestern State Legislators workshop on science and infrastructure, jointly organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2021).

• Northwestern’s Master of Engineering Management Program 8th Annual Industry Night (2022).

Mohanbir Sawhney gave keynote lectures at:

• Department of Defense (2021)

• DC Mid-Sized Companies Annual Forum (2021)

• Indiaspora Global Forum 2022

NUTC hosted the Freight Transportation & Logistics: Accelerating First to Last Mile executive program twice in Fall 2020 and Fall 2021, and Navigating Through a Challenging Landscape Spring and Fall 2022.

Hani Mahmassani was appointed to the Executive Committee of the Transportation Research Board.

Fabian Bustamante was a member of the Steering Committee of the NSF Workshop on Overcoming Measurement Barriers to Internet Research (WOMBIR 2021).

Special Events:

NUTC hosted and Hani Mahmassani moderated 9 Asynchronous Virtual Roundtables (AVRs) on Transportation, Logistics and Supply Chain Networks under COVID-19 in 2020.

NUTC hosted and Hani Mahmassani moderated 5 Asynchronous Virtual Roundtables (AVRs) on Reopening Our Cities focused on working toward the safe and strategic reopening of cities and regional economies in 2020.

The Telemobility University Transportation Center (UTC) hosted 5 Telemobility Virtual Roundtables (TVRs) aimed at understanding the supply side of tele-activities and e-processes and their impact on the demand for travel and mobility in 2021.

Hani Mahmassani and Northwestern professor Kristian Hammond led a webinar, “Battling the Bottleneck: Moving Vital COVID-19 Medical Supplies to the Front Lines,” at Northwestern’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs.

Northwestern Engineering and NUTC doctoral researchers - Haleh Ale Ahmad, Hoseb Abkarian, Moein Hosseini Maher Said, Eugene Wickett and Emma Zajdela – took the top prize at Loyola University Chicago Quinlan School of Business and NUTC’s 2nd Annual Supply Chain Data Analytics Competition.

Research

Amanda Stathopoulos and doctoral researcher Elisa Borowski received a research award from NSF’s National Hazards Research and Applications Information Center for “Resilience of Social Capital Networks to Social Distancing: Multiscale Evolution of Physical and Virtual Support Networks.”

Yu Nie and Amanda Stathopoulos were co-investigators on a Smart Connected Communities Planning Grant project, “Improving healthcare access in marginalized communities through smart connected technologies.”

Yu Nie was PI on EAGER Collaborative Research project, “An Autonomous Modular Vehicle Technology-based Multifaceted Mobility Service Paradigm - A Proof-ofConcept Study.”

Hani Mahmassani and doctoral researcher Haleh AleAhmad published a report on “Impact of COVID-19 on Taxi Operation in Chicago.”

Hani Mahmassani and doctoral researcher Divyakant Tahlyan published a report on “Mobility Trends and COVID-19 in the City of Chicago.”

Karen Smilowitz served as co-principal investigator with Notre Dame professor Marya Lieberman for a NSF EArlyconcept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project, “Unraveling Illicit Supply Chains for Falsified Pharmaceuticals with a Citizen Science Approach.”

Noshir Contractor was PI or collaborator on National Science Foundation projects:

• Towards a unified theory of regulatory functions and networks across biological and social systems.

• The Next Normal for Teaming: Transitioning Out of COVID-19.

• Natural experiments with online games: Support, impact and mitigation during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

• Teaming in the Time of Covid-19: Understanding how technology affordances can enable collaboration during sudden workplace disruption.

• Collaborative Research: A Hierarchical Multidimensional Network-based Approach for Multi-Competitor Product Design

Government Agencies

USDOT awarded NUTC a University Transportation Center grant to lead a Tier 1 UTC on Telemobility with the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Texas, Austin, (2020-22)

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) awarded a collaborative research project to Hani Mahmassani, Alireza Talebpour (University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign) and Samer Hamdar (George Washington University) for “Third Generation Simulation (TGSim) Data: A Closer Look at the Impacts of Automated Driving Systems on Human Behavior.”

The U.S. Department of Energy through ARPA-E awarded Hani Mahmassani and Pablo Durango-Cohen the project

“LOwering CO2: Models to Optimize Train Infrastructure, Vehicles, and Energy Storage (LOCOMOTIVES),” in

collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory. NUTC completed collaborative research effort with Metra (the Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation) to evaluate ridership scenarios for services offered by Metra and other mobility providers in the Chicago area highway and rail transportation network.

Kimberly Gray and Amanda Stathopoulos were awarded Embassy 2050, funded by the U.S. Department of State & The Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) on Future Innovations in Embassy Planning, Design, Construction & Operation.

NUTC collaborated with University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Illinois Autonomous Vehicle Association for the Illinois Department of Transportation on the research project titled, “Illinois, a Leader in Mobility 4.0 and Beyond (ICT R27-228)”

NUTC launched a project funded by the Illinois Department of Transportation to review of the current state of development of advanced air mobility (AAM), conduct analyses of AAM capabilities, business models, demand and broader impacts of AAM.

Hani Mahmassani and NUTC provided strategic and operations planning support to the Maricopa Area Government (MAG) in collaboration with Arizona State University.

Hani Mahmassani was appointed to the Research and Technology Coordinating Commitee of the Federal Highway Administration USDOT.

Doctoral researcher Christopher Cummings received an award from the Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) of the Transportation Research Board/National Academies to study the potential of urban air mobility service for airports during 2020-2021.

Industry Partnerships

NUTC developed a vaccine logistics dashboard in collaboration with Teradata showing vaccines delivered and administered and vaccine utilization through a project funded by NSF’s RAPID program. NUTC produced a report in Collaboration with the Association of American Railroads, “The U.S. Railroads and COVID-19: Keeping Supply Chains Moving.”

NUTC collaborated with Redwood Logistics to evaluate new machine learning techniques for shortterm forecasts of truckload lane prices.

NUTC collaborated with Matson Logistics to evaluate ocean freight demand forecasting using machine learning.

NUTC collaborated with Cintra US to characterize the dynamics and contributing factors to urban growth and development.

NUTC hosted the fall 2020 Industry Technical Workshop, “Advancing Freight Automation.”

NUTC hosted the spring 2021 Industry Technical Workshop, “Transportation Electrification at Scale.”

NUTC hosted the fall 2021 Industry Technical Workshop, “Advancing Urban Air Mobility.”

NUTC hosted the spring 2022 Industry Technical Workshop, “Rethinking Revenue Management PostPandemic in the Travel and Transportation Industry.”

NUTC hosted the fall 2022 Industry Technical Workshop, “Visibility Through the Supply Chain: Technologies and Best Practices.”

Support from Ruan Transportation and Schneider enabled funding to 6 dissertation year fellowships.

Funding from Greenbriar Equity Group supported 9 Undergraduate Transportation Research Fellowships in summer 2020 and summer 2021.

At the 2nd Annual Coyote Logistics Digital Summit, Hani Mahmassani was invited as an expert on the “Ask Us Anything: Get Logistics Answers Straight From the Experts” panel

Hani Mahmassani served as invited expert at the panel on future of mobility at the Oliver Wyman Mobility Summit in 2020.

Barry Nelson collaborated with General Motors on the project, “Mobility as a Service Network Simulation.”

NUTC hosted 17 Sandhouse Rail Group webinars / seminars with numerous commuter and freight rail industry partners.

Northwestern Transportation Club members toured Amazon fulfillment operations.

International

Conferences and Committees

Ian Savage became President-elect of the Allied Social Science Association (ASSA) Transportation and Public Utilities Group (TPUG).

Hani Mahmassani was elected Convenor of the International Symposium in Transportation and Traffic Theory International Advisory Commitee

Doctoral researchers Adrian Hernandez and Jing Yu with Pablo Durango-Cohen launched the 1st Virtual Inter-University Symposium on Infrastructure Management (VISIM1).

Hani Mahmassani gave keynote lectures at:

• BTR 3rd Annual Bridging research in Transportation Conference (2021)

• Italian Association of Transport Economists (SIET), (2020)

• IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (2021).

• Annual Meeting and International Conference of Chinese Institute of Transportation (2021).

• MSCI International Transportation & Development (2022)

Noshir Contractor gave keynote lectures at:

• National University of Singapore Global Research Forum (2021).

• 1st Workshop on Computational Methods in Social Sciences (The 71st ICA Annual Conference Regional Hub - China) (2021).

• PLM Road Map & PDT (2021).

• 9th International Conference ‘Comparative Media Studies in Today’s World’ (CMSTW), St. Petersburg, Russia (2021).

• ICA-Affiliated New Media International (Virtual) Conference (2020).

Mohanbir Sawhney gave keynote lectures at:

• Dubai Expo 2020, UAE.

• TiE Global Summit, Dubai (2021)

• Indiaspora, Dubai (2021)

• YPO India (2022)

• ‘Massmerize 2020’ hosted by NASSCOM India (2022)

David Morton gave plenary presentations at the European Conference on Stochastic Optimization Computational Management Science (2022) and ACM SIGMETRICS, International Workshop on Critical Infrastructure Network Security (2021).

Diego Klabjan was plenary speaker at Analytics Forum 2020, Bogota, Colombia.

Research Participation

Amanda Stathopoulos and doctoral student Jason Soria teamed up with colleagues from Israel, Eran Ben-Elia, Yoram Shiftan, and Shelly Etzioni, to study micro-transit adoption in Tel Aviv, Israel, “Microtransit Adoption in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From a Choice Experiment with Transit and Car Commuters.”

Noshir Contractor is co-principal investigator for Government of India: Center of Excellence in Sports Analytics, IIT Madras.

NUTC hosted visiting scholars from Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, Greece, Lebanon, Norway and Saudi Arabia.

Government and Industry Partnerships

Noshir Contractor was President-elect, International Communication Association (ICA) (2020/2021).

Hani Mahmassani serves on the International Advisory Board for the Panama Canal Authority.

NUTC students were selected as fellows of the International Road Federation

NUTC is a university member of the International Public Transportation Association (UITP)

Hani Mahmassani collaborated with the World Bank on a study and workshop on transformative transportation technologies

Centers and Institutes

NUTC’s effective role in generating awareness and educating the Northwestern community on transportation-related topics with resulting reports, ongoing projects, and current research is evidenced by a growing list of synergistic centers and institutes

These programs and centers provide enhanced opportunities for students and faculty to learn about and engage in a wide range of subjects affecting the complex and diverse transportation industry The activities they spearhead are open to the campus community and generally to the transportation community beyond Northwestern, contributing to a rich intellectual and professional experience in virtually all aspects of transportation systems research and education

CCITT - Center for the Commercialization of Innovative Transportation Technology

CCITT promotes technology innovation and entrepreneurship in transportation at Northwestern through events, speaker series, educational curriculum, and industry research partnerships.

CEH - Center for Engineering & Health

Center for Engineering and Health’s Humanitarian Logistics research takes modeling and solution approaches to coordinate people, organizations, and materials to deliver goods and services to people in need.

Tier 1 Center on Telemobility

Researchers at Northwestern University, UC Berkeley, and UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business are collaborating on research and outreach activities through a Tier I University Transportation Center on Telemobility aimed at assessing how ICT technologies and e-commerce processes will impact the demand for travel and mobility in the future, taking into consideration lessons learned from this dramatic natural experiment.

Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy

Paula M. Trienens Institute for Sustainability and Energy is an umbrella organization designed to create, advance, and communicate new science, technology, and policy for sustainable energy by focusing on supply, demand, and use.

NICO - Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems

NICO serves as a hub and facilitator for path-breaking and relevant research in complexity and data science transcending the boundaries of established disciplines.

Transportation Library

The Transportation Library is the largest collection of specialty transportation publications in the nation, staffed by expert reference librarians at Northwestern’s campus in Evanston.

CESR - Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience

The Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience at Northwestern Engineering aims to tackle complex sustainability challenges like climate change, water quality, clean energy, and pollution through research and educational efforts that span multiple departments and disciplines.

Buffett Institute for Global Affairs

Northwestern University’s Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs brings together the brightest minds from across Northwestern University and around the world to address critical global challenges that cannot be solved from a singular disciplinary or geographic perspective.

Transportation Library

The Transportation Library houses valuable research, provides public service programming, and hosts special events that support and celebrate Northwestern University’s transportation research community and beyond Founded in 1958, the library supports the NUTC curricula and research programs With a catalog containing over 926,000 books, journals, indexed articles, and more, the Transportation Library at Northwestern boasts one of the largest transportation-focused collections in the world

Contact Information and Location

Northwestern University Transportation Library 1970 Campus Drive - Level 5 - Evanston, IL 60208

Hours: 8:30 am - 5:00 pm transportationlibrary@northwestern.edu libguides.northwestern.edu/transportation

The Transportation Library would like to introduce Rachel Vigil as the new hire for the library. September 2022, Rachel began her role as the Research Services Assistant.

She has a B.A. from the University of Chicago in Environmental and Urban Studies and an interest and experience in transportation research. Her B.A. thesis was on pedestrian transportation and safety. She also has experience working with rare materials as a page in the Special Collections Research Center at U of C, research experience in the Healthy Regions and Policies Lab, and leadership experience as the General Chair of Doc Films at U of C.

Transportation Library materials and files are available on all transportation modalities, including but not limited to air, rail, highway, pipeline, water, urban transport, and logistics. More specifically, the Library hosts a sizable collection of law enforcement materials, transportation company annual reports dating back through the 19th century, and one of the nation’s most comprehensive collection of printed US environmental impact statements (EIS).

The Library is open to the general public. For research assistance, contact the Library staff via email, telephone or stopping by during the scheduled hours of operation listed below.

The Library and Information Science for Transportation (LIST) committee serves as a forum for transportation librarians and the transportation research community on developments in information science and their applicability to transportation. The LIST committee is in the Research and Education (ABG00) Section of the Transportation Research Board (TRB).

Her interests include bike rides, baking, sewing, midnight movies, and neighborhood exploration. library.northwestern.edu/libraries-collections/transportation/

Retirements and Appointments

Farewell to Transportation Library Director Roberto Sarmiento – After more than 24 years as the head of the Transportation Library, Sarmiento retired at the end of April 2022. His leadership and vision propelled the library to become one of the leading transportation libraries in the world. It was under him that the library was a leader in collaborative initiatives among transportation libraries, including as a core developer of the Transportation Research Board’s database, TRID – the largest index of transportation information in existence. Roberto was a transformative leader during his tenure with the Transportation Library.

Rachel Cole was appointed Head of the Transportation Library in May 2023. Rachel previously served as the library’s Public Services Librarian beginning in December 2015 and has a background including working with special collections with the Newberry Library and the Art Institute of Chicago, as a Research Editor with the Encyclopedia Britannica, and as a Records Analyst with consulting firm Deloitte.

Library Highlights

Marking a return to public events, the Transportation Library, in partnership with the Transportation Club, co-hosted a transportation trivia night in April 2022. The event brought together students and faculty for an evening of fun, friendly competition, and transportation history illustrated by the library’s collections.

Furthering its mission of making collections broadly accessible, the Transportation Library digitized several of our archival collections, all of which are now accessible to the public through the libraries’ digital collections portal (https://digitalcollections.library.northwestern.edu). These collections are the Early Automobile Companies Ephemera Collection, 1910-1932; Late 19th – Early 20th Century Bicycle and Bicycle Parts Catalogs; the Ronald J. Sullivan Photograph Collection, a collection of photographs primarily of Chicago-area transit dating from 1946-2000, and The Panama Canal Construction Photograph Collection. In 2020 and 2021, the library celebrated the 50th anniver-

saries of two important milestones in transportation history with digital exhibits: the 2020 exhibit The 747 Takes Off: The Dawn of the Jumbo Jet Age (https://libraries.nu/747anniversary) and the 2021 exhibit All Aboard Amtrak! – The 50th Anniversary of America’s Railroad (https://libraries.nu/amtrak50). In 2020, the library also received the prestigious Leab Award from the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries as the winner in the Digital category for the 2019 exhibit Independence in the Air: African Aviation in the 1960s (https://libraries.nu/independenceintheair).

Rachel Cole served as President of the Transportation Division of the Special Libraries Association. She was the author of an article titled “Northwestern’s Hough Timetable Collection” in the January 2020 issue of Caxtonian, the journal of the Caxton Club. She also was the author of “The Changing Transportation Landscape in Chicago” in MAS Context and contributed a section on O’Hare International Airport to a piece remembering architect Helmut Jahn and his work, also in MAS Context.

Faculty Affiliates | Researchers

FACULTY & AFFILIATES

Affiliations

FM Feinberg School of Medicine

KM Kellogg School of Management

McC McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

MJ Medill School of Journalism, Media, and Marketing Communications

Zdenžk Bažant (McC)

McCormick Institute Professor; Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Material Science, and Engineering

Mechanics of materials and structures and structural safety; nanomechanics; hygrothermal effects; applications to concrete, fiber composites, tough ceramics, rocks, soils, bone, snow, and sea ice

Henry Binford ( WC)

Professor Emeritus

Evolution of subcommunities within cities; redevelopment of cities; history of transportation relating to growth of cities

David E. Boyce (McC)

Adjunct Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering; Professor Emeritus

LB Northwestern University Library

CM School of Communications

LW Pritzker School of Law

WC Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

LU Loyola University Chicago

UI University of Iceland / Chalmers University

Clarke L. Caywood (MJ)

Professor Emeritus

Crisis management and communications; humanitarian logistics; stakeholder relationship management; political and deceptive messages and advertising; China management education and training

Wei Chen (McC)

Chair and Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Wilson-Cook Professor in Engineering Design

Multidisciplinary design optimization; design under uncertainty; simulation-based design; design theory and methodology

Ying Chen (McC)

Assistant Professor of Instruction, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Urban travel and location forecasting models; transportation network analysis and modeling; history of urban travel forecasting methods

Ronald R. Braeutigam (McC)

Harvey Kapnick Professor Emeritus

Applied microeconomic theory and industrial organization; regulatory economics

Fabián E. Bustamante (McC)

Professor of Computer Science

Design, deployment, and evaluation of large-scale distributed systems in both wide-area and mobile networks; experimental systems, particularly operating systems and distributed computing

Machine learning, data mining, natural language processing, network analysis techniques on largescale data problems in transportation

Sunil Chopra (KM)

Deputy Dean, Kellogg School of Management; IBM Professor of Operations Management and Information Systems; Professor of Operations

Supply chain management and operations; design of communication and distribution networks; supply chain risk

Rachel Cole (LB)

Head, Transportation Library

Library instruction, research, and reference support; Social media, exhibit curation, and outreach related to special collections; Transportation history

J. Edward Colgate (McC)

Walter P. Murphy Professor of Mechanical Engineering; Allen and Johnnie Breed Senior Professor in Design

Human-machine interface; haptics; mechatronic systems

James G. Conley (KM, McC)

Clinical Professor of Operations; Faculty Fellow, Northwestern University Segal Design Institute

Product design and development technologies; intellectual property strategies; intellectual capital; innovation management

Noshir Contractor (KM, McC, CM)

Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences, Departments of Communication Studies, Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, Management and Organizations, and Computer Science; Director of the Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC)

Social and knowledge networks; statistical and computational methods; organizational theory

Anne Coughlan (KM)

Emeritus Professor of Marketing; Polk Bros. Chair in Retailing and Professor of Marketing

Distribution channel management and design; pricing strategy; reverse channels for product returns; competitive strategy

Gianluca Cusatis (McC)

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and (by courtesy) Mechanical Engineering

Mechanics of infrastructure materials and constitutive modeling of concrete and cementitious composites

David A. Dana (LW )

Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law; Professor of Real Estate, Kellogg School of Management (Courtesy); Director, Program on Sustainability and Food and Animal Law

Environmental and land use law, regulation, and policy, particularly methods of allocating carbon credits; regulation and technological change in the automobile industry; eminent domain reform and urban sprawl

Charles H. Dowding (McC)

Professor Emeritus, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Construction vibrations; structural health monitoring; subsurface exploration decisions

David Dunand (McC) (ISEN)

Professor of Materials Science and Engineering

Lightweight metallic materials for energy-efficient transportation; high-temperature alloys for energyefficient internal-combustion and jet engines

Pablo Durango-Cohen (McC)

Associate Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Transportation infrastructure management; modeling and analysis of production control systems; capacity management; statistical performance modeling; contract analysis and design

Steven Franconeri (McC) ( WC) Professor, Cognitive Psychology

Visual cognition; guidance, capture, and tracking of visual attention and awareness; effective visual design

Robert J. Gordon ( WC)

Stanley G. Harris Professor of Social Sciences

Macroeconomic theory; monetary theory; airline economics; airline management; airline history; airline customer experience

Kimberly A. Gray (McC)

Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Family Chair in Civil and Environmental Engineering; Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and (by courtesy) Chemical and Biological Engineering; Urban sustainability; brownfield and urban redevelopment; environmental impacts of transportation on ecological and human health; energy-efficient technology

Michael Hewitt (LU)

Professor; Ralph Marotta Endowed Chair in Free Enterprise; Executive Director, Business Leadership Hub; Faculty Director, Supply Chain and Sustainability Center, Quinlan School of Business

Freight transportation, Supply chain management, Workforce planning, Integer programming

Paul M. Hirsch (KM)

Professor Emeritus of Management & Organizations; James L. Allen Professor of Strategy & Organization

Organizational change; human resources and mass media

Joel Horowitz ( WC)

Charles and Emma Morrison Professor of Market Economics

Econometrics; travel demand modeling; urban transportation; air quality

Agnes Horvat (CM, KM)

Associate Professor of Communication and Computer Science (by courtesy); collective intelligence; computational social science; data

Complex Networks, Collective Intelligence, Computational Social Science, Data Science

Thomas N. Hubbard (KM)

Elinor and H. Wendell Hobbs Professor of Management Professor of Strategy

Industrial organization; trucking industry; economics of strategy; applied econometrics; economics of technology

John C. Hudson ( WC)

Professor; Director of Geography Program

Cultural and physical geography of North America; biogeography; economic geography; cartography and mapping; geographic information systems

Albert Hunter ( WC)

Professor of Sociology Emeritus

Transportation in urban areas; public policy; urban sociology; community; ethnicity, culture, and literature; methods

Arthur P. Hurter (McC)

Professor Emeritus of Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences

Logistics; applied microeconomic analysis; routing and risk analysis; facility locations; plant and equipment investment and replacement

Seyed M.R. Iravani (McC)

Professor of Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences; Director of Graduate Studies

Stochastic modeling and analysis; production and logistics; optimization of queuing systems; manufacturing and supply chain management; white collar work and service operations systems; analysis of integrated production and maintenance policies

Breton Johnson (McC)

Senior Associate Director, NUTC; Director, Center for the Commercialization of Innovative Transportation Technology

Technology transfer and commercialization; technology-based economic development; space and technology innovation policy

Richard Joseph ( WC)

Professor Emeritus, Political Science

Growth, governance, and sustainable development; comparative democratization; African politics; HIV prevention strategies; energy, environment, and transportation

William L. Kath (McC, KM)

Professor of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics and (by courtesy) Neurobiology; Margaret B. Fuller Boos Professor

Computational neuroscience; fiber optics; wave propagation; nonlinear dynamics; complex systems

Diego Klabjan (McC)

Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences; Director, Master of Science in Machine Learning and Data Science Program; Director, Center for Deep Learning

Business intelligence and analytics in air transportation; logistics; railway industry; retail; supply chain management

Frank S. Koppelman (McC)

Professor Emeritus of Civil & Environmental Engineering

Travel demand modeling and prediction; yield management; urban, regional, and intercity transportation planning; development of advanced travel demand modeling concepts and methods

Raymond J. Krizek (McC)

Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Injectability and mechanical properties of grouted sands; disposal of waste slurries; problems involving soil-structure interaction; engineering behavior of dredged materials;dynamic response of soils

Hani S. Mahmassani (McC, KM)

William A. Patterson Distinguished Chair in Transportation; Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering; Director, NUTC; Professor, Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences

Dynamic traffic system management; network modeling and optimization; dynamics of user behavior and telematics; intermodal freight and logistics

Therese McGuire (KM)

Conagra Brands Research Professorship in Strategic Management; Professor of Strategy

State and local public finance; fiscal decentralization; property tax limitations; education finance; regional economic development

David Morton (McC)

Walter P. Murphy Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences

Stochastic optimization and its application to energy, security, and health problems

Barry L. Nelson (McC)

Walter P. Murphy Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences; Co-director of Master of Engineering Management Program

Computer simulation of dynamic stochastic systems; design and analysis of simulation experiments

Yu (Marco) Nie (McC)

Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering

Network optimization; traffic flow theory; traffic simulation

Thomas O’Toole (KM)

Associate Dean for Executive Programs; Clinical Professor of Marketing

Connecting data science to business value creation, data-driven marketing, customer value management, digital business models, the emergent structure of marketing and loyalty programs

John C. Panzar ( WC)

Louis W. Menk Professor Emeritus of Economics

Theoretical and policy issues relating to network industries (telecommunication, electric transport, air transport and postal services); industrial organization; regulatory economics; applied microeconomic theory

Mark A. Ratner (McC)

Professor Emeritus of Chemistry

Organic electronics and photovoltaics; energy storage materials; energy concentration routes; agent-based modeling of complex systems

Kathryn Reid (FM)

Research Associate Professor, Neurology

Impact of sleep loss and circadian disruption on human performance; health and safety with emphasis on the impact of shiftwork

Ian Savage ( WC)

Associate Chair, Department of Economics; Professor of Instruction

Transportation safety; transportation economics; urban transit

Mohanbir S. Sawhney (KM)

Associate Dean, Digital Innovation; McCormick Foundation Chair of Technology; Clinical Professor of Marketing; Director of the Center for Research in Technology & Innovation

Business innovation, digital and social media marketing, network-centric innovation, growth and scaling strategies

Joseph L. Schofer (McC)

Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Transportation policy analysis and planning; Uses of data and information in decision making; Issues and factors in investment decisions; Managing transportation systems in an uncertain world

Karen Smilowitz (KM, McC)

James N. and Margie M. Krebs Professor, Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences; Co-Director, Center for Engineering & Health

Design and operations of logistics networks; vehicle routing and scheduling; supply chain management; applications in commercial and non-profit settings

Amanda Stathopoulos (McC)

William A. Patterson Junior Professorship Chair; Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Transportation choice modeling and forecasting

Gunnar Stefánsson ( UI)

Professor, University of Iceland, Chalmers University of Technology; Vice President Research UArctic

Political science, public opinion, civil liberties, right to travel, and travel privacy, security and identification policies; housing and community development; transportation articulation

Fred W. Turek (FM, WC)

Director, Center for Sleep and Circadian Biology; Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Biology; Professor of Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

Sleep and circadian rhythms; metabolic, neurodegenerative and gastrointestinal disorders

Brian Uzzi (McC, WC)

Richard L. Thomas Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change; Co-Director, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO); Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences; Professor of Sociology

Social network science and computational methods as predictors for outstanding human achievement

Jan A. Van Mieghem (KM)

A. C. Buehler Professor; Professor of Operations Operations Management and Strategy

Logistics and transportation management, collaboration management, management of technology and economics

Michael Watson (McC)

Associate Professor of Instruction

Supply chain network design; facility location; analytics

Kermit Wies (McC)

Senior Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor, Retired Deputy Executive Director for Research and Analysis – Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP)

Transportation planning; professional practice; travel demand forecasting; freight modeling; geographic information systems (GIS)

Hyejin Youn (KM)

Associate Professor of Management and Operations

The interplay between technological innovation and socio-economic systems (urbanisation, economic diversity and specialisation, invention activity, future of work)

Qi Zhu (McC)

Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and (by courtesy) Computer Science Design

Automation of intelligent cyber-physical systems and Internet-of-Things applications, cyber-physical security, energy-efficient CPS, and system-on-chip design.

Welcome New Faculty Affiliates

Qi Zhu

Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and (by courtesy) Computer Science

Zhu is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science. He researches design atomation for intellegent cyber physical systems (CPS) and Internet-of -Things (IoT) applications, cyber-physical security, safe and robust machine learning for CPS/IoT, energy-efficient CPS, and system-onchip design. Between 2020-22 his work has been featured in over 15 different publications.

Zhu has earned his Ph.D. Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley and holds a B.E. in Computer science from Tsinghua University in Beijing Shi, China.

Ying Chen

Assistant Professor of Instruction

Ying Chen is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Northwestern University. She was an adjunct professor at Northwestern University and a Senior Data Scientist at Elevance Health between 2019 and 2022. Chen was a Research Assistant Professor at Northwestern University between 2015 and 2019. She received her Ph. D in Civil and Environmental Engineering and M.S. in Computer Science from Northwestern University in 2015 and 2011, respectively. She specializes in solving problems by using AI, machine learning, and data mining techniques, with emphasis on data science in transportation, healthcare and topics related to smart cities, complex networks analysis, modeling, and solution approaches for logistics and complex systems, connected/autonomous vehicles, social networking influence, and big social media data mining for travelers’ behavior study.

Faculty Recognition

Zdenek P. Bazant

• Elected Foreign Associate of the Engineering Academy of Japan

• Elected International Fellow in the Canadian Academy of Engineering, April 2022

Wei Chen

• 2022 Engineering Science Medal

Sunil Chopra

• Received the Sidney J. Levy Teaching Award, Kellogg School of Management

Ed Colgate

• Elected to the National Academy of Engineering, 2021

Noshir Contractor

• Inducted into the 2019 AAAS of Fellows Academy of Management Lifetime Service Award

• International Communication Association Fellows Book Award

• Simmel Award from the international Network for Social Network Analysis

Steven Franconeri

• 2021 Cole-Higgins Award for Excellence in Teaching from Northwestern Engineering

Kimberly Gray

• Named Inaugural Pepper Family Chair

Hani Mahmassani

• Elected Convener of International Symposium on Transportation and Traffic Theory International Advisory Council

• 2022 Roy W. Crum Award, Transportation Research Board

• 2022 Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award, Purdue University, February 2022

• Elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), 2021

Barry Nelson

• Received David F. Baker Distinguished Research Award from the Institute of Industrial & Systems Engineers

Yu “Marco” Nie

• 2019 Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies Best Paper Award

Ian Savage

• President of Allied Social Science Association (ASSA) Transportation and Public Utilities Group (TPUG)

• Chairperson for Criteria for Installing Automatic and Remote-Controlled Shutoff Valves on Existing Gas and Hazardous Liquid Transmission Pipelines (National Academies)

Karen Smilowitz

• Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of Transportation Science

• Crain’s 2020 Notable Women in STEM

• 2022 INFORMS Fellow

• Editor -in-Chief in Transportation Science

NUTC research is driven by the major challenges facing the transportation industry and society Mobility, safety, environmental sustainability, energy, generational change, economic development, resilience, infrastructure renewal, and financial viability are at the forefront of transportation agencies’ policy agendas Competitiveness, globalization, changing customer expectations, uncertainty, volatility and technological change are major considerations in transportation enterprises’ strategic and operational decision making

Emerging Challenges in Transportation

Our Center’s array of research endeavors is in a constant state of evolution, designed to stay ahead of, recognize, understand, and offer solutions for the significant problems encountered by both private and public sectors within the transportation industry. Faculty members and student researchers collaborate closely with industry and agency partners, pooling resources to gather data, formulate methodologies for analysis, gain valuable insights, develop effective strategies, design practical solutions, and progress through the stages of implementation, testing, and evaluation.

The Center actively engages its faculty and collaborates closely with industry partners to identify strategic research domains that hold substantial influence on both society and the industry. These areas exhibit several key features: (1) a substantial societal and/or industry impact; (2) a notable catalyst for opportunities, especially in light of technological advancements; (3) fundamental and methodological complexities that call for perspectives from various disciplines. This list naturally adapts and expands alongside evolving strategic priorities, incorporating emerging challenges that progressively integrate themselves into the Center’s core research focal points over time. This ensures that the Center remains at the forefront of addressing crucial issues in a dynamically changing landscape.

Four Areas in Focus

1. Autonomous, Connected, Electric, Shared (ACES): Towards smart urban mobility

2. Digital transformation of freight and logistics

3. Decarbonization of multimodal transport & logistics systems

4. Telemobility, E-commerce, future of work and impact on cities | activity patterns

Autonomous, Connected, Electric, Shared (ACES): Towards Smart Urban Mobility

The timeline for ubiquitous autonomous vehicles remains a moving target subject to speculation and vulnerable to setbacks along the bumpy road of technological innovation and adoption. However, many indications point to it being a question of when, in what form and at what rate, rather than if autonomous vehicles will become part of everyday mobility.

Automation is only one of the transformative dimensions shaping future urban mobility. Vehicles are increasingly connected—to each other, to the cloud, to the infrastructure, mostly through wide-area wireless networks. Connected mobility is integral to the vision of smart sustainable cities. In this context, the third transformative pillar is the electrification of transportation as part of the continued greening and decarbonization of mobility. Electrification is synergistic with autonomous features, as vehicles are built from the ground up.

The trend towards shared mobility is likely to continue as autonomous vehicles further change the economics of vehicle and fleet operations. Different business models with varying degrees of privacy, availability and pricing will emerge, conveying a wide array of mobility options. How to integrate these services with conventional high-capacity public transportation is a topic of significant interest to NUTC researchers.

Our approach is to build the scientific and methodolog-

ical foundation for understanding how these forces are shaping the future of mobility and developing the mechanisms to influence these developments towards better outcomes from the standpoint of safety, efficiency and environmental sustainability. As these four considerations interact in shaping the future, critical challenges must be addressed—technological, methodological, operational, organizational, and institutional, among others. Research at NUTC continues to inform several fcets of the problem, including the strategic and operational implications of connected and autonomous vehicles, simulation and optimization tools for real-time operation of transportation and logistics systems, strategic-level choices for public investment in urban infrastructure and services, machine learning and data science techniques, understanding the growing role of connected personal devices in activity and travel engagement of individuals and groups, and the enabling role of these platforms in the sharing economy. However, considerable fundamental and applied research and development is required to enable the vision and its promise. Safety and cyber-security loom large as major considerations in any public deployments.

NUTC is actively engaged in expanding the multidisciplinary community, working on the multiple facets of these problems at Northwestern and in building partnerships with industry and public agencies to address the system-level aspects of these developments.

Digital Transformation of Freight and Logistics

Freight and logistics are core research and education areas for NUTC, and the focus of many of our interactions with our Business Advisory Council companies. Identifying and helping to leverage developing trends that are impacting the transportation sector is an essential part of our mission. While the digital transformation of our economy and society has touched nearly every sector, it may seem that freight and logistics, being physically bound, are the final frontiers for digitalization. However, the reality is that digitalization now permeates virtually all facets of freight movement and logistics operations.

With much of manufacturing already highly automated, or having found its sweet spot between automation and human intervention, the search for efficiency and productivity continues towards greater automation in upstream and downstream processes—activities with traditionally high human engagement. In addition, the transformation of the retailing landscape, kicked off more than two decades ago with e-commerce, is gathering more momentum through greater omnichannel presence and innovation, having reached new levels of adoption through and post covid.

Disruptive technologies bring along new, digital entrants that seek to transform traditional business relationships. In freight and logistics, services built on big data, cloud and connected platform technologies, are intended to give customers a seamless experience in terms of ease of access, price transparency, supply chain visibility, and near real time integrated service. How to integrate new

technologies and practices into existing relationships and legacy processes is one of the challenges faced by established companies in this sector.

NUTC research is particularly focused on the opportunities created by the transactional data generated through greater automation, role of new technologies, and the intersection between the logistics of e-fulfillment, urban deliveries and developments in last-mile technologies and service concepts.

Areas addressed include:

• Role and optimization of unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) in last-mile delivery, and in shortening delivery times from fulfillment center to customer locations.

• Logistics network design for systems with varying degrees of process automation, including autonomous trucks and delivery vehicles.

• Leveraging real-time transaction data for online fleet management and order fulfillment.

• Role and prospects for emerging on-demand delivery options through crowd-sourced and shared-economy concepts.

• Machine learning and AI applications that leverage increasingly rich and diverse data streams for prediction and dynamic reconfiguration.

These issues are of considerable strategic importance to industry as well as state and national-level agencies.

Decarbonization of Multimodal Transport and Logistics Systems

The freight and logistics sector provides the essential backbone to global and domestic economic activity. Its carbon impact is significant and has become a target for efforts to reduce the overall carbon footprint of the transportation sector. To promote greener transportation methods, there is a need to enhance multimodal freight transportation, particularly at transloading terminals, especially for supply chains lacking direct rail or water access. In 2020, intermodal transportation represented 10.6% of mode share by ton-mileage and 13.8% by value, highlighting its potential as a sustainable alternative to less carbon-efficient modes.

Improving the performance of intermodal freight operations requires overcoming various challenges. The freight processing and distribution sector in the US is highly fragmented, involving numerous stakeholders with differing objectives and incentives. Freight transportation networks, especially intermodal systems, are complex due to multiple modes owned and operated by public and private entities across various jurisdictions, sometimes with unclear rules and responsibilities for management, maintenance, security, and emergency response. This complexity makes these systems both vulnerable to disruptions and surprisingly resilient, as even minor failures can lead to significant delays at high economic and environmental costs. However, they can also provide alternative routes and modes, as seen during the pandemic when intermodal rail stepped up to meet eCommerce and supply chain demands while trucking faced lockdown-related challenges.

NUTC research is seeking creative approaches that

recognize technological evolution scenarios along with operational and strategic considerations for both carriers and shippers.

Key premises underlying our research include:

• Freight transportation encompasses interconnected systems, facilities, and processes that move goods from origins to destinations, with interventions in one part of the network affecting others.

• Logistical decisions made by shippers and carriers span multiple levels, from strategic sourcing to tactical inventory decisions, and have become increasingly intertwined and real-time due to advanced technologies and a volatile economic and consumer-driven environment.

• Decarbonization must identify pareto-efficient solutions that balance environmental, operational, and economic considerations.

• Intermodal activity occurs at large hubs that play a crucial role in both domestic and global logistics, making them prime targets for decarbonization through electrification and hydrogen-based fuels. Delays or failures at these hubs can have significant ramifications for transportation operations, supply chains, and economic sectors, highlighting the importance of detailed operational planning and potential for win-win solutions in decarbonization and resilience through automation and electrification.

Telemobility, E-commerce, Future of Work and Impact on Cities | Activity Patterns

The world has changed considerably for transportation planners since April 2020—and it is still changing, in many ways that are fundamental to how we work, shop, play, seek health care, and travel. Little did we know at the January 2020 Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board that there would be no real TRB meeting in 2021, and the 2022 meeting would have less than half of the normal attendance-- and not because of an unexpected snowstorm at O’Hare. Little were we prepared for the Zoom world that we all inhabited for a while, nor did most of us know that Zoom even existed. When the opportunity presented itself in the summer of 2020 (before COVID-19 vaccines became available) to establish a Tier I UTC on the impacts of information/communication technologies (ICT) on travel demand, Northwestern led a consortium that included UC Berkeley and UT-Austin in proposing the establishment of a UTC on Telemobility, described in more detail on pages 25-26.

Two years later, we remain far from any sort of long-term equilibrium, and the natural experiment continues, adding more confounding factors related to both domestic and global economic factors.

Many areas of uncertainty remain; those that are especially critical to transportation planners, policy-makers and industry decision-makers include:

• What will the next normal be like in terms of work arrangements?

• Will “the office” remain the nerve center for companies and their workers?

• Will “downtown” revert back to its pre-pandemic role as central place for business activity?

• What will happen to all the empty office space in many of the country’s large cities?

• Will the move to downtown by young tech workers and empty nesters seeking more variety reverse towards a resurgence of suburbanization?

• What will happen to public transit which has only seen an anemic recovery that has not exceeded the 60% of pre-pandemic levels in most North American cities and many cities around the world?

• Will eCommerce and home delivery continue growing at the phenomenal rates seen during the pandemic, or will they revert back to the (already high) pre-pandemic levels?

• What will be the impact on retailing and shopping malls as key destinations for non-work activities?

• What will the impact be on supply chains from ports of entry to last mile delivery?

• Will telehealth make a significant dent in how health care is delivered?

What are the right policies in this environment—should telework on a wide scale be encouraged for its environmental benefits to the detriment of central-city viability, should eCommerce dominated by a few huge corporations be encouraged for its lower carbon footprint compared to driving to the store, to the detriment of small-scale retailers in small and rural communities?

To help navigate through these uncertainties, it is essential to measure, track, and update evolving scenarios of the next normal for work and activity patterns underlying both urban mobility and the world’s supply chains [intended to anticipate and respond to the changes]. NUTC researchers will remain at the forefront of research aimed at elucidating these questions.

Tier 1 Center on Telemobility

Researchers at Northwestern University, UC Berkeley, and UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business collaborated on research and outreach activities through a Tier I University Transportation Center on Telemobility aimed at assessing how ICT technologies and e-commerce processes will impact the demand for travel and mobility in the future, taking into consideration lessons learned from the dramatic natural experiment caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

sites.northwestern.edu/telemobilityutc

The Impacts of Covid-19 on US Retail: An Empirical Investigation

Investigators: Sunil Chopra (Northwestern), Ioannis (Yannis) Stamatopoulos (UT Austin)

Covid-19 clearly increased the demand for online shopping. But Covid likely also affected offline shopping: the timing, frequency, and duration of customers’ store visits are all likely different because of Covid. Moreover, both the online and the offline effects of Covid likely vary by location. And these effects have strategic implications for retailers’ omnichannel portfolios. For example, big brick-and-mortar players such as Target and Walmart managed to use curbside pickup to grow both their revenues and their profits during Covid. We aim

to empirically understand Covid’s effects on customers’ shopping behavior, and the resulting implications for retailers’ omni-channel portfolios. We are especially interested in retailers with strong brick-and-mortar assets (such as Walmart and Target).

Understanding Telemobility Behavior

Investigators: Amanda Stathopolous (Northwestern), Hani Mahmassani (Northwestern), Joan Walker (UC Berkeley)

COVID-19 has abruptly upended normal travel, retail and work routines, causing an acceleration of trends that were already underway involving a shift towards virtual environments. The goal of the behavior research team is to understand, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the

complex tele-adoption behaviors taking shape during the pandemic era. We focus our analysis on telework and e-commerce engagement with grocery and food delivery, and examine three main research themes:

1. Behavior modeling of telework/e-commerce adoption levels, experiences and future intentions. We specifically examine the socio-demographics, satisfaction, values, and life-style variables that shape the adoption experience, and future intentions.

2. Analysis of adoption across multiple engagement layers, i.e., monetary expenditure, time-use, physical travel/virtual access, and parcel delivery activity. We specifically highlight the importance of hybrid forms of engagement, namely where respondents use mixed forms of shopping (virtual and physical store visits, new pick-up options) or mixed strategies for work (alternating between office and in-home), and explain motivations, satisfaction and outcomes.

3. Analysis of adoption pattern evolution, seeking to explain changes in e-commerce/work strategies over time. Specifically we examine notching up and gateway behavior: that is if experienced segments act differently than novice users, and if specific e-commerce or work experience lead to accelerated or persistent willingness to use telemobility.

Throughout this research we highlight the importance of dynamic behavior and learning, complex substitution or complementarity between physical and telemobility, and nuanced differences determined by respondents worksituation and family status.

Future of Work: Scenario Planning

for COVID-19 Recovery

Investigators: Susan Shaheen (UC Berkeley), Hani Mahmassani (Northwestern), Joseph Schofer (Northwestern)

The Future of Work Scenario Planning Workshop will engage experts in transportation, major employers, and real estate and development companies in June 2021. The experts (n=30 to 40) will define a key focal issue around the future of work in response to COVID-19 recovery and the corresponding timeline for the scenarios (e.g., 1 to 3 years, 4 to 6 years). The workshop will identify key driving forces including critical uncertainties, develop plausible scenario worlds, and identify key policy strategies and research recommendations to maximize social and environmental outcomes. University Transportation Center (UTC) researchers will integrate key findings from the Telemobility UTC longitudinal panel survey,

which documents work-from-home/telework activities of respondents and their preferences for the future of work in COVID-19 recovery. The workshop will also inform future UTC respondent surveys on work-from-home/ telework. The workshop will focus on employers and real estate/development company responses to COVID-19 recovery based on key driving forces, such as state of the virus/vaccine (public health and safety), employee preferences, and economic factors (productivity and revenue). Experts will examine potential impacts on transportation modes such as public transit, shared mobility, and auto ownership/use. The scenarios will also inform regional modeling efforts and policy strategies to maximize the public good.

Distribution Problems in eCommerce Fulfillment Investigators: Yu Nie (Northwestern), Karen Smilowitz (Northwestern)

In this project we consider an omnichannel retailer that operates both brick-and-mortar stores and super warehouses. The retailer’s objective is to meet traditional and eCommerce fulfillment demands that can be group into three representative modes: shopping in store, ordering online and delivering from warehouse or store, ordering online and picking up at store. On the supply side, the retailer must decide the inventory at the store, the express delivery capacity, the delivery premium, and the just-in-time inventory replenishment for stores. On the demand side, a consumer must consider in her utility of each fulfillment mode such factors as the cost of transportation, the delivery fee, the cost/risk of shopping in store, and the likelihood of unsatisfactory online purchase. We formulate this omnichannel fulfillment model as a leader-follower game, in which the leader maximizes the retailer’s profits, and the follower allocates consumer demands

between the three channels according to utility maximization. The properties of the problem will be analyzed, and the solution methods will be developed. A case study will be constructed by calibrating a stylized model using empirical data.

Regional impacts of telemobility options: Capitalizing on the two-way relationship between infrastructure investments and travel demand

Investigators: Pablo Durango-Cohen (Northwestern), Hani Mahmassani (Northwestern)

Communications technologies and e-commerce have a profound effects on travel, on the delivery of goods and services, and consequently, on the use of transportation infrastructure. Experiences acquired as a result of travel restrictions or health concerns, e.g., working remotely, are likely to accelerate some of these trends. Furthermore, widespread deployment of (innovative) services as a result of Covid-19, e.g., telehealth, may, fundamentally, alter travel patterns of many population segments. Changing travel behaviors may have significant long-term implications on the tens of billions of dollars that are invested each year to

keep highways, rail lines, ports, airports, public transit systems, and other infrastructure in a state of good repair. For example, as e-commerce accelerates, streets in residential neighborhoods support increasing loads associated with delivery vehicles and, in turn, deteriorate more quickly and require additional investments to provide the same level of service. Perhaps more importantly, as we are redesigning physical and virtual supply chains for delivery of goods and services, there are tremendous opportunities to guide investments in transportation infrastructure that are going to have effects on travel behavior with both immediate and lasting positive economic, social, and environmental consequences. Examples of significant short-term effects of infrastructure investments include increasing employment. Long-term effects include opportunities to improve the efficiency, level-of-service, reliability, resilience of these supply chains. The project objectives are, therefore, to develop a framework to evaluate the regional life-cycle and supply-chain consequences of investments in design, construction, and management of transportation infrastructure and to validate it by considering a variety of scenarios.

Core Research Areas

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, most of the NUTC research objectives were driven by the impact and challenges companies have faced navigating through this crisis that have burdened all stakeholders nationally and internationally NUTC’s goal is to find new insights, concepts and tools that can be utilized by industry, business, and government to support decision-making The results of NUTC’s intensive research agenda is to help all sectors move toward more efficient and responsive services and systems The research projects underway and completed by 2020-2022 arelisted below by the main principle investigator

Core research at NUTC is focused on a wide-range of areas of investigation, including:

• Logistics and Supply Chain Management

• Network Modeling and Planning

• Transportation Demand, Economics and Forecasting

• Transportation Asset Management

Zdenek Bazant

New Kind of Experiment and Theory to Determine the Effect of Crack-Parallel Stresses on Fracture of Concrete and Similar Materials

National Science Foundation

To determine experimentally and justify theoretically the effect of crack-parallel stress on the fracture energy of concrete, formulate the consequences for fracture mechanics of concrete and other quasibrittle materials essential for infrastructure, critically examine the existing softwares, teach the new knowledge, and disseminate the conclusions and broader implications in the engineering community and beyond.

Enabling Predictive Scale-Bridging Simulations through Active Learning

Triad National Security, Los Alamos National Laboratory, National Nuclear Security Administration

Northwestern researchers under the supervision of Professor Zdenek Bazant are developing, in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory, a three-dimensional model for crack branching in layered media. The Northwestern team will validate, in collaboration with LANL, the model with controlled experiments at LANL that can control material, fluid and boundary conditions for crack branching. The data from the three-dimensional model will be used to train machine learning models that relate crack branching to material constitutive parameters.

• Transportation Policy

• Human Performance and Transportation Safety

• System Operations

Irini Blomberg Stathopoulos

CAREER: Transformative Mobility Analysis: Mixed Methods Framework

National Science Foundation

The goal is to combine behavioral and social science with mobility analysis to envision future cities that integrate public transit, active mobility, sharing and crowd-sourcing, and autonomous services. Research and education activities aim at transforming future mobility decision making, ensuring that transformative technologies and services deliver public value and make cities more prosperous and livable. The CAREER research goal is to define, measure and understand the dynamics of human behavior and social practices to support engineering solutions for transportation innovation adoption. The research focuses on the umbrella of transformative mobility services, fueled by crowd-sourcing (e.g., crowdshipping), sharing (bike-sharing), and new technology platforms (ride-hailing) in both personal and goods mobility. Results from this project will establish a comprehensive mixed-methods framework of mobility transformation analysis, providing a leap forward in studying how societies adopt innova-

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tion. Tightly integrated with the research, the CAREER educational goal is to construct a multi-tiered education and outreach curricula at the intersection of behavioral science and engineering. This objective will help prepare future engineers and industry leaders to innovate and evaluate technical solutions that align with human behavior and societal goals.

Fabian Bustamante

Collaborative Research: CNS Core: Medium: On the Criticality of the Submarine Cable Network

National Science Foundation

Ninety-nine percent of all international data is carried by a cable network deployed at the bottom of oceans around the world. While initial deployments of the submarine network date back to the mid-19th century, today, a complex mesh of over 500 cables, which we refer to as the Submarine Cable Network (SCN), stretches over 1 million kilometers and connects all major regions in the world. The SCN provides nearly all intercontinental Internet connectivity. It serves as the operational backbone of global services like those of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, and is critical for addressing connectivity needs in underserved areas of the world. If the approximately forty cables connecting the United States to the rest of the world were cut, it is estimated that only 7% of the total US traffic volume could be carried by satellite.

Despite the scale and criticality of the SCN, very little has been reported in the research literature on its characteristics or its broader role in the global Internet. There is a distinct dearth of publicly available information about many of these cable systems features, how they interconnect with terrestrial infrastructure, how they are managed and how services utilize them. This lack of understanding of the SCN, coupled with its complexity and rapid growth, makes it increasingly difficult to manage and maintain, and more vulnerable to problems that degrade performance or disrupt services that rely on it. The overall objective of our work is to develop a thorough understanding of the criticality of the submarine cable network in context. The effort will: (1) define a methodology for the analysis of the SCN criticality for the Internet, across regions, applications and uses, (2) design and build a SCN observatory that embodies this methodology, and (3) conduct an analysis of criticality in a range of contexts from country-specific to third-party service dependencies to environmental threats.

NeTS: SMALL: Broadband Service Reliability: Characterization and Improvement

National Science Foundation

While providing access and sufficient capacity remains a challenge in a great part of the world, in many developed countries broadband services continue to improve rapidly propelled by government and private interests. With widely available and faster broadband, consumers start to migrate key services such as television, telephony and home monitoring to over-the-top alternatives, and their expectations regarding broadband reliability are becoming paramount, ranking first in recent reports on consumer experience. Yet, despite the rich history of reliability engineering we have very limited understanding of reliability in the context of broadband, from the most appropriate metrics for characterizing it, to approaches for gathering measurements or assessing its impact on quality of experience. When reliability problems appear, troubleshooting them is nearly impossible—there is no principled approach to determining whether the source of the problem is the user’s device, DNS, the home wireless, the access link, the Internet service provider, or anything else in the network. The outcome is increased frustration for users, growing management costs for Internet service providers, and, ultimately, underperforming applications. We study the reliability of broadband services along three tracks: (1) Characterizing broadband service reliability problems through techniques, metrics and algorithms to study, diagnose and localize common problems; (2) Understanding the relation between reliability and QoE; and (3) Exploring edge-based solutions to improve reliability..

RAPID: Internet Traffic and Compliance with Government Stay-at-Home Measures

National Science Foundation

Within the US and across the globe, a growing number of people are being placed under official lockdowns or stay-at-home policies as coronavirus cases and fatalities mount. Isolation (or quarantine) is considered one of the most effective public health measures to limit the spread of infectious diseases, and the apparent success of this measure in China, South Korea and Singapore suggest it will hold true for the coronavirus. The use of isolation and related public health measures have always been controversial given the political, ethical, and socioeconomic issues they raise. Part of the challenge is the no-obvious link between the level of compliance with these measures and their effectiveness.

The research agenda is motivated by a simple observation - as people comply with stay-at-home measures, one would expect to see a significant change in network traffic on off-peak hours as parents and children work remotely. The goal of the proposed RAPID research agenda is to explore the potential of network traffic change as a proxy of citizen compliance with stay-at-home measures with the long-term goal of providing public health authorities with the basis for an evidence-based analysis of their effectiveness.

Wei Chen

Approach

for Multi-Competitor Product Design

Co-PI: Contractor, Noshir

National Science Foundation

This research is at the frontier of interdisciplinary research that encompasses engineering design, systems engineering, social science, and network science. The methods developed will enhance industry’s resilience to changing markets through strategic product design.

Adaptive Discovery and Mixed-Variable Optimization of Next Generation Synthesizable Microelectronic Materials Research Projects Agency – Energy

We propose an ML enhanced mixed-variable design optimization framework to efficiently extract useful information from existing data in literature and physics-based simulations to guide the autonomous search for optimal materials designs.

Stochastic Self-Consistent Clustering Theory for Composite Performance Prediction: from extreme value microstructure attributes to design of interphase for toughness Duke University, Air Force Office of Scientific Research

The objective is to develop an integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) approach encompassing (a) methodologies for microstructure characterization and reconstruction with anomalies; (b) self consistent clustering theory and interphase modeling for rapid, efficient computation; (c) coupon-level stochastic damage assessment; and (d) the enhancement of toughness and strength through design of the microstructure and interphase. This approach for polymer matrix composite performance predictions emphasizes the development of a data-based approach accounting for anomaly detection and initiation of defects and damage mechanisms. As part of this work, we will develop new theories, create open source libraries and tools, and construct new microstructure reconstruction and analysis algorithms. Five major tasks will be involved.

Master Multidimensional Network Analysis for Data Driven Vehicle Preference Modeling and Segmentation Prediction an Extension to Spatiotemporal Modeling of Diffusion Pattern in China Auto Market

Ford Motor Company

The objective is to extend the previously developed multidimensional network analysis approach to developing a data-driven spatiotemporal modeling framework for analyzing and predicting complex diffusion and evolving patterns of customer preferences in China auto market using the multi-year New Car Buyers Survey data. The project aims to deliver a systematic, network-based spatiotemporal modeling framework for predicting customers’ choices by integrating multidimensional network theory, time series analysis, and spatiotemporal econometrics. We analyze and predict customers’ evolving preferences by considering social interactions, time-lagged effects, and regional differences to support Ford’s market positioning and vehicle development. The advanced analytics methodology and framework developed in this project can be applied for attribute

prioritization and revenue/volume forecast for future vehicle programs. This will help improve the forecast model accuracy, avoid annual revenue loss, reduce investment cost, and deliver volume with increased profit.

Ed Colgate

NRI: Shape-Based Remote Manipulation

National Science Foundation

This collaborative project led by Carl Moore and Rodney Roberts at the joint engineering school of Florida A&M University and Florida State University and involving Ed Colgate and Matt Elwin at Northwestern University, aims to develop a new paradigm of “shape-based remote manipulation” (SBRM). The project will involve creating a remote manipulation testbed with the main operator interface at FAMU/FSU and the remote manipulator (“avatar”) at Northwestern. Experimental studies will be carried out across the two campuses.

Collaborative Research: HCC: Medium: TouchBots for Surface Haptics

National Science Foundation

The fingertip is a remarkable multimodal sensor capable of detecting sustained as well as vibratory forces, local deformation such as braille cells or raised lines, surface hardness/softness, warmth/coolness, and endless types of textures. There are compelling reasons to exploit these sensory capabilities in interfaces: touch screen accessibility for the vision impaired, low-distraction automotive interfaces, interaction in AR/VR, as well as remote touch for social, medical and retail purposes. The wealth of commercially important use cases has led to a burgeoning market for haptic technologies including vibrotactile, wearables, and variable friction surface haptics. And yet none of the extant technologies engages more than a small fraction of the stimuli listed above. This project will lead to a powerful new class of devices with a greatly expanded suite of haptic feedback capabilities.

Noshir Contractor

Composing Teams with TEAMSTaR: Tool for Evaluating And Mitigating Space Team Risk

NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center

Long distance space exploration missions require the “right combination” of individuals to live and work productively for durations of well over 2 years. An extended timeline combined with unprecedented autonomy will also require the “right recombinations” of people on

particular tasks and in response to mission events. This project leverages the CREWS agent-based model (ABM) developed and validated in NASA’s HERA analog to create a decision support tool, TEAMSTaR, that can be used by mission control and crew members to compose and effectively manage crews before or during the mission. Our program will test two primary, but interrelated, hypotheses: (H1) Model predictions generated by TEAMSTaR accurately predict crew social relations, team cohesion, and team performance, (H2) Crew and mission control members make higher quality composition and scheduling decisions with the aid of TEAMSTaR and TEAMSTaR-generated guidance principles, than when making decisions without the aid of this decision support tool. To meet our research objectives, we will use previously collected data and lessons learned from NASA-funded projects to refine an extend our CREWS ABM. We will conduct virtual experiments to identify guiding principles that transcend a specific crew configuration to identify and provide a rationale for key attributes, behaviors, emergent characteristics, and moderating and mediating factors.

The Next Normal for Teaming: Transitioning Out of COVID-19

National Science Foundation

This project has three aims. Aim 1 is to understand the innovations in organizing in teams that have been enabled by working remotely amidst the COVID-19 crisis. Aim 2 is to use these data to understand the ways technologies have been used to scaffold teamwork via teaming affordances during the COVID-19 crisis. Aim 3 is to use these insights to generate prescriptive recommendations about how technologies can be used to enable collaboration in the post-Covid future of work. We leverage data that we have been collecting during the Covid crisis, supported by NSF RAPID (number). We will add two additional data streams to build out this future vision of teaming post-Covid. In total we bring three data streams to bear on this question:

1. Surveys - intraorganizational

2. Surveys - general national sample survey (in the US and China)

3. Interviews

Collaborative Research: A Hierarchical Multidimensional Network-based Approach for Multi-Competitor Product Design

National Science Foundation

This proposal is at the frontier of interdisciplinary research that encompasses engineering design, systems engineering, social science and network science. The methods developed will enhance industry’s resilience to changing markets through strategic product design.

Team Task Switching in Astronaut Crews on the International Space Station: Integrating Multiteam Membership, Multiteam Systems, multi-tasking, & Multidimensional networks to Monitor & Enable Functional Work Shifts in Astronaut Crews

NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center

Interviews with current and former astronauts as well as reports from astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) reveal the potential for decrements in crew performance stemming from difficulties in shifting back and forth between independent work and highly interdependent work. For example, ISS crews tend to work for extensive periods of time on independent tasks associ-

ated with research projects and other mission-related activities. However, these crewmembers are also expected to switch seamlessly and sometimes spontaneously to interdependent team-based tasks of high criticality and time urgency (e.g., Extravehicular Activity - EVAs, spacecraft maintenance). We define this as a problem of team task switching. Team task switching impacts the cognitive, motivational, behavioral, and performance effects that result when individuals respond to changing work demands within teams. Changes requiring members to switch tasks, switch teammates, and/or switch tools and technologies deplete attentional resources and make additional cognitive processing demands, which in turn affect the potential for adaptive and seamless task switching.

Safe Bets and Risky Propositions: Leveraging Rich Data to Understand Scientific Diversity, Impact, and Potential of Teams

National Science Foundation

Studies of scientific teamwork have typically focused on drivers of team effectiveness that operate after a team has assembled, thus overlooking the factors that affect scientists’ decisions to join teams in the first place. The few that do the latter (including some of our work), have focused on structural predictors (prior coauthors or citation) rather than semantic predictors (content and expertise in prior work). In this project, we address this theoretical and empirical gap. Specifically, we investigate (1) the structural and semantic factors that predict scientific team assembly and (2) which of these assembly factors predict scientific team performance. Doing so enables us to address secondary, but equally important questions about the performance of scientific teams, such as: why some repeat collaborations are successful while others are not. We use a multi-theoretical multi-level approach that considers individual (gender, experience, expertise, etc.), relational (prior collaboration, citation, etc.) and team-interlock ecosystem factors. Methodologically, we apply a multi-method approach to understand team assembly and performance, that entails (1) topic modeling to reveal researcher’s expertise based on their publication text, (2) latent semantic analysis to reveal the backward and forward citation distance between publications and (3) a novel hypergraph approach to understand how the structure of the ecosystem of team interlocking membership and interlocking knowledge. We leverage as data sources local updated copies of the Web of Science and the XML version of the full text of articles in the ScienceDirect database provided for research purposes to us at Northwestern by the vendors.

RAPID: Teaming in the Time of Covid-19: Understanding How Technology Affordances Can Enable Collaboration During Sudden Workplace Disruption

National Science Foundation

The coronavirus COVID-19 has already been highly disruptive to workplaces. With little notice and marked urgency, organizations have been shifting their workers out of their typical workplaces and into their homes.

Widespread fear, as well as practices such as social distancing or closing offices in favor of remote collaboration, may influence how employees communicate and collaborate, even if none of the employees catch the disease themselves.

We will investigate what implications these disruptions have on communication, interpersonal relationships, and employees in organizations. This work aims to examine

both the impact of COVID-19 on these work processes in organizations, and how processes impacted by the outbreak recover, or fail to recover, over time. We posit that, beyond its immediate impact on the organization, COVID-19 will alter social relationships in the organizations in ways that endure even after the pandemic itself. In short, the goal of this research is to identify the impacts of COVID-19 on employees and collaboration within organizations, as well as whether organizations recover naturally from these changes or whether a deliberate intervention will be necessary for recovery.

Measuring and Predicting Performance for Individuals Teams and Systems in Interdependent Crew Tasks MAPPITS ICT

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Many programs are underway to decrease the team performance risks associated with long distance space exploration. For example, developing training techniques, decision protocols, and crew composition tools. Evaluating countermeasures will require valid metrics that can be used to understand how they affect individual, team, and multiteam system performance. A valid and effective way of creating these metrics is using optimization methods to find the best possible decisions that individuals and teams could make under different circumstances and given the other’s decisions as input. Then, the metrics can be created to compare the actual decisions that are made and the best ones. Using the results as the performance measures, a variety of analysis on the effect of different parameters on astronauts’ performance becomes feasible. Therefore, as the next step in this project, we develop and use two methods - machine learning and autologistic actor attribute models- to predict the future performance given the parameters including the social connections of the astronauts. The resulting product will be a software package that takes the relationships of people and predicts the performance for the future.

Macro Signatures of Success in Human Autonomy Teams

U.S. Army Research Laboratory

This project has three research objectives: (1) Identify the team processes and properties that predict success in human-autonomy teams; (2) Isolate the unique effects of autonomy (versus humans) on team processes and outcomes; and (3) Identify learning signatures associated with successful human-autonomy teaming. These objectives critically advance theoretical understanding along two dimensions. First, we move current thinking from dyadic human-autonomy interactions to complex, systemic human autonomy teaming. Second, we move

from the extant - largely static - human teaming theories to dynamical network theories of the impact of human autonomy teaming on team processes and outcomes.

Gianluca Cusatis

Optimizing Bridge Abutment Slope Protection

at Stream Crossing

Wisconsin Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration (WHRP)

The following specific objectives are defined based on the request for proposal by WHRP:

• Determine the severity, causes, and types of slope protection issues in Wisconsin by analyzing qualitative and quantitative factors believed to trigger failure in the slope protection.

• Plan and oversee comprehensive surveys providing useful information about alternative slope protection strategies practiced successfully at various other states.

• Perform Life-Cycle cost analyses to provide information about the optimum abutment slope protection strategy with maximum service life and minimum life-cycle cost.

• Update the WisDOT bridge manual with consistent recommendations and guidelines from this study.

Collaborative Research: Innovation in Sustainable Mass Timber Building Systems

National Science Foundation

The scientific objectives of this project are: (1) To formulate, calibrate, and validate a multi-physics and multiscale computational framework for the simulation of longterm (e.g. creep and shrinkage) and failure behavior (e.g. fracture, delamination, buckling) of CLT and NLT; (2) To obtain experimental data on large-size CLT/NLT structural members subject to varying environmental conditions (e.g.cycling temperature and relative humidity), sustained loads and ultimate load conditions.

Steven Franconeri

HCC: Medium: Visual Processing Capacity in Dynamic Data

National Science Foundation

Knowledge communication at the computer-human interface requires discovering, understanding, comparing, and communicating patterns in data, maps, and diagrams. Those patterns are ubiquitously transmitted via static visual displays. Dynamic displays are increasingly used to

effectively leverage the processing power of the human visual system: to show the evolution of two populations, to translate among multiple views of a map, or show the same data across different perspectives, axes, or projections. In theory, dynamic displays should be a highly efficient way to transfer information to human minds – but they instead tend to overwhelm, confuse, or misinform. Existing guidelines for the use of motion are not strongly informed by the perceptual limitations of the human observers of these dynamic patterns. The goal of this work is to determine the perceptual capacity limitations within these dynamic displays. By focusing on human performance for information extraction from dynamic charts and maps, we will produce a perceptual model of why and when visual processing succeeds or fails in dynamic displays. This model will lead to perception-informed guidelines that allow designers to construct efficient displays for their viewers.

CHS: Medium: Collaborative Research: Empirically Validated Perceptual Tasks for Data Visualization

National Science Foundation

Knowledge occupations require discovering, understanding, comparing, and communicating patterns in data, maps, and diagrams. Those patterns are ubiquitously transmitted from technology to humans via visual displays. Dynamic displays are increasingly used to effectively leverage the power of the human visual system to show a process unfold, translate among multiple views, or respond to interactive queries. While such displays should, in theory, be the most efficient way to transfer information from technological systems to human minds, they instead tend to overwhelm, confuse, or misinform. We propose to refine a perceptual model of why and when visual processing works or fails in dynamic displays, and to create guidelines that allow designers to construct efficient displays for users and trainees.

Collaborative Research: Mechanisms of Visuospatial Thinking in STEM

National Science Foundation

Overview Using chemistry as a case study, this research addresses the relative contribution of three mechanisms for visuospatial representation and transformation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM): domain-specific chunking, domain-general compression skills, and raw visuospatial capacity. A deeper understanding of the mechanisms involved in spatial thinking will lead directly to better pedagogy and curricular design for teaching spatial thinking in STEM classrooms

Robert Gordon

The Industry Origins of Slow U.S. Productivity Growth

Smith Richardson Foundation

This research will assess four complementary explanations of the productivity growth slowdown – the diminished impact of innovations, reduced capital investment, mismeasurement, and an increased burden of regulations. The project will focus on the 12 largest industries and investigate the sources of slow productivity growth by two approaches. The first will be to assess the importance of past and current innovations by searching through industry trade publications and by interviewing industry experts. The second will be to develop detailed studies of a subset of the industries, based on Census data and other sources, to determine the role of compositional shifts, measurement issues, and regulations.

Kimberly Gray

LEAP-HI: Catalyzing Resilient Urban Infrastructure Systems: Integrating the Natural and Built Environments National Science Foundation

Green Infrastructure (GI) has the potential to reduce stormwater flows, prevent combined sewer overflows, store water, diminish nutrient and pollution loads, create habitats and jobs, and enhance social equity and quality of life in communities. Yet, we fail to see widespread adoption of GI integrated with Built Infrastructure (BI) to create high performing, resilient and adaptive systems successfully operating under a wide range of conditions. Without a rigorous engineering approach to quantify and predict GI’s direct and indirect benefits, investment in the up-front costs of GI are difficult to justify and attract. The goal of the proposed project is to enable communities to maximize the potential of GI investments through the implementation of four interlinked objectives:

(1) to design and deploy a sensor network that facilitates the acquisition of critical GI/BI data;

(2) to predict dynamic, systems-level performance of integrated GI/BI networks;

(3) to quantify direct and indirect benefits to improve estimates of GI value;

(4) to tailor network designs that maximize GI/BI benefits and attract investment.

Emoke-Agnes Horvat

Collaborative Research: HCC: Small: Science communication in the ecosystem of digital media platforms

National Science Foundation

This work will merge ideas, approaches, and technologies from information science, communication, and journalism to create novel knowledge, advanced models, and an innovative tool that will have broad implications for socially intelligent computing beyond the scope of the proposed research. (1) While the majority of research on information diffusion has focused on individual platforms, this project will develop a critical multi-platform analysis framework for online science communication. (2) It will illuminate how scientific findings are shared, discussed, and distorted online. (3) It will provide empirical evidence of how early signals deduced from collective cues on social media can be harnessed computationally to predict the coverage of scientific articles. (4) It will lead to the design of an interactive tool and will demonstrate how traces of collective reactions can be compellingly and usefully presented to science journalists in real reporting scenarios. The work will be fueled by and will further existing theoretical and empirical research on the use of new media in science dissemination, intentional and unintentional information distortion online, harnessing collective cues from Web-based platforms for early prediction, and designing information interfaces for journalists.

CAREER: Transforming Online Scholarly Communication with Networked Crowd Computation

National Science Foundation

The goal of this CAREER proposal is to unleash the transformative potential of the online dissemination of science by first providing, based on uniquely rich high-dimensional real-world data, fundamental knowledge about (1) how research findings are disseminated on various online platforms, (2) what scholarship dominates the broad discussion about science, and (3) whether there are specific sharing patterns that would anticipate the outcome of thorough peer review. We will utilize the gained insights to develop informed tools which will (a) help ensure that the online circulation of science benefits researchers from various disciplines, institutions, and cultures; and (b) use the collective intelligence coded in sharing networks to lay the foundations for a crowd review system. The latter would be especially useful for science journalists who are often combing through growing volumes of articles on arXiv before these are subjected to traditional peer review. Overall, this research promises to improve considerably our ability to trace, assess, use, and influence the online dissemination of science towards attaining a scholarly communication system with greater visibility, heterogeneity, and utility.

CRII: CHS: Early Detection of Collective Misconceptions with Network-aware Machine Learning Tools

National Science Foundation

Concepts of collective intelligence or the so-called “wisdom of crowds” play increasingly fundamental roles in economic and political forecasting, as well as in addressing public policy disputes and panel decisions about creative merit. Diversity of information and expertise among crowd members has been identified as a key condition for the emergence of collective decisions that are superior to any individual’s personal judgment. However, diversity is hard to attain: there are systemic difficulties in mobilizing

minority groups on top of which additional factors related to social influence such as herding, groupthink, and conformity tend to further reduce the variety of point of views.

This project aims to design network-aware machine learning tools that elicit useful diversity, counter herding and homophily effects in restraining the wisdom of crowds and improve the accuracy of collective forecasting. The proposed research will train graduate and involve undergraduate students in state-of-the-art data science as they develop and deploy novel research algorithms and software for effectively harnessing collective intelligence at the intersection of modern computational and sociological research. The work will ultimately deliver new technical tools that optimize the wisdom of networked crowds, helping designers of online systems and policy makers leverage the benefits of collective intelligence.

Seyed Iravani

Decision-Flow Queueing Networks for Analysis of Knowledge-Based Service Operations Systems

National Science Foundation

This project develops design and control principles for Decision-Flow Queueing (DFQ) Networks that are the underlying system of knowledge-based service organizations. In DFQ networks, tasks flow within several nodes and, in addition to processing the task, each node also makes a decision of where the task should be routed next. The project was motivated by social media’s (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) effort to identify fake news before they spread out throughout the network. The applications of DFQ networks, however, extend to other service organizations such as financial institutions, government, and healthcare, among others.

Diego Klabjan

Agile Manufacturing Systems

Semiconductor Research Corporation

As packaging and test technology becomes more complex, especially with the advent of systems on a package enabled by silicon interposers (passive or active) there is a glaring gap in planning and decision systems tied to technology development and high-volume manufacturing as will be outlined below. In technology development,

one is faced with a complex dynamic environment that includes a mix of test vehicles, prototypes, and engineering material, along with a steady flow of revenue products. The dynamism comes from the small volumes and one of a kind or first of a kind processes, equipment and collaterals which rely on an immature supply chain. It is of interest of have close to real-time decision systems that will help plan the factory operational strategy and enable rapid responses to deviations. The factory process flows represent a multi-echelon job shop type flow with setup times where some products may share a specific machine group. The problem and concerns above can be scaled up the high-volume manufacturing system. In this instance the problem is expanded out of the factories to also include additional echelons due to upstream processing along with a combination of reasonable predictable build to stock (BTS) demand, coupled with agility needed to handle unpredictable configure/build to order (xTO) demand. The latter demand is also typically of higher strategic and profit value to the company.

Unsupervised Data Extraction from Graphs and Data

Plots

Semiconductor Research Corporation

Quintessential technical information and IP is often presented in the form of graphs and data plots (images). These images are usually embedded in one of many possible document types and formats including presentation slides or whitepapers. Especially in large corporations or research institutions the number of documents containing this type of image data is vast. Extracting the underlying data correlations, parametric dependencies, and trends contained in these images in a fully automatic and large-scale fashion would open up new avenues to mine and understand crucial pre-existing domain knowledge. Many day-today engineering activities such as equipment troubleshooting, DOE planning and excursion containment would benefit and be enhanced by enabling experts to discover multi-echelon causal relationships between control parameters, process variables and their effects. The main goal of this project is to develop deep learning models and algorithms that extract data in a structural form from graph and data plots and to incorporate these models into existing knowledge-management systems that focus on text analysis only.

Hani Mahmassani

Illinois, a Leader in Mobility 4.0 and Beyond Illinois Department of Transportation

The main objective of this study is to establish a flexible and adaptable framework that will leverage available resources to prepare IDOT, and other transportation agencies, for Mobility 4.0 – a connected and digitized, multimodal, autonomous transportation systems. To achieve this goal, the following steps conducted in collaboration with researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Illinois Autonomous Vehicle Association:

1. Review major efforts in CAV/T integration into roadway network in the United States, relevant to the needs of Illinois.

2. Identify current and future/planned resources within the state of Illinois that can be leveraged to prepare for Mobility 4.0.

3. Establish a stakeholder list from state, regional, and local transportation agencies, emergency services, law enforcement, key private industries, non-profit organizations, civic groups, academic institutions, and research facilities.

4. Invite stakeholders to attend a “stakeholder workshop” to enumerate and prioritize program areas, related to CAV/T integration and connectivity.

5. Administer interview and survey to scope key program areas from the stakeholder workshops and statewide and local transportation system needs.

6. Conduct a balanced-scorecard analysis to prioritize the needs and solutions that maximizes effective use of available resources and partnership/collaboration opportunities, while minimizing costs, environmental impact, and future risks.

7. Build a flexible and adaptable framework that leverages current and planned initiatives in Illinois, along with creating an integrated system for the state and neighboring states to develop protocols and a testbed arena.

Third Generation Simulation (TGSim) Data: A Closer Look at the Impacts of Automated Driving

Systems on Human Behavior

US Dept. of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration (with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

The vision is to bring the efficiency and safety of autonomous driving to all Americans. Automated Driving Systems (ADS) has the potential to significantly improve congestion, emissions, energy consumption, and safety throughout the roadway system. A key factor in realizing this potential is the characterization of the impacts of ADS on human decision-making (including driver, pedestrian, bicyclists, and scooterist behaviors). Unfortunately, data from human-ADS interactions are considerably limited and existing datasets are either based on controlled environment testing or only capture the interactions under very limited scenarios. Accordingly, in this study, we propose to collect three comprehensive datasets from human-ADS interaction under a diverse set of scenarios in both highway and arterial environments. The proposed data collection effort provides the mean to better understand human-ADS interaction.

NSF RAPID – Tracking and Deconstructing Covid 19 Vaccine Distribution as an Extreme Logistics Event

Co-PI: Smilowitz, Karen National Science Foundation

This study has the following objectives: 1. Investigate the development and deployment of the Covid 19 vaccine as a large-scale, complex extreme logis-

2. Document in real-time the state of the Covid 19 deployment supply chain, including tracking of vaccination rates over time, and disseminate through a public dashboard.

3. Provide interim guidance for the latter portions of the continuing deployment process based on the cumulative experience to date.

4. Extract lessons learned and principles for the robust design and resilient operation of future extreme logistics deployments, including other health-related crises and disaster response situations.

Advancing Air Mobility in Illinois Illinois Department of Transportation

Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) aims at transferring passengers and goods between urban, local, regional, and intraregional areas using groundbreaking aircraft technology. A new generation of vehicles, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOLS), promise transformative services for the mobility of passengers and goods, from flying taxis to drone deliveries, as well as an array of applications in sectors such as agriculture, construction, and infrastructure inspection in both urban and rural environments. Rapid developments in both technology and use cases call for a comprehensive assessment of the opportunities for these technologies, challenges and barriers facing deployment, as well as how those might integrate with the overall transportation and mobility systems.The overall objective of this study is to provide IDOT and policymakers with a clear picture of the potential for AAM service in Illinois, and the opportunities it might provide for mobility and economic development in the State. This includes identifying and quantifying likely technological developments, with detailed assessment of application domains and use cases with significance to Illinois, along with potential impacts and deployment challenges of AAM.

The research approach recognizes two distinct groups of AAM use cases: (1) AAM as a mode with the focus on transporting people and/or goods and (2) AAM as a tool in areas such as agriculture, infrastructure construction and inspection, and emergency services. Within each group, several use cases (“verticals”) will be identified, and an analysis framework that addresses the following five components will be applied: (1) supply-side capabilities of and constraints on AAM service (2) the level and mix of demand for AAM service, (3) business models for deployment that take into account both the supply constraints and demand for services, (4) externalities or broader impacts that affect society at large and economic development in the State, leading to (5) recommended policy and regulation actions.

LOCOMOTIVES: Lowering CO2 – Models to Optimize Train Infrastructure, Vehicles, and Energy Storage

Co-PI: Pablo Durango-Cohen Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, US Department of Energy.

The US freight Class 1 rail system is a critical component of the vast transportation sector, responsible for the movement of a significant amount of freight throughout the country. New propulsion and energy storage (ES systems) technologies, as well as the charging/fueling infrastructure, must be developed and deployed if full decarbonization of fleet GHG emissions is to be achieved. The research team consisting of Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory brings unique and complementary expertise to develop and apply analysis, evaluation and decision tools to provide objective assessment of the effectiveness of various technologies and deployment strategies to significantly reduce GHG emissions from the rail freight sector. The tools developed will provide the capability to examine trade-offs between various cost, benefit and other impact components of the different technologies and policies that may impact their deployment. These tools will help support railroad firm decision-making and agency policy formulation and evaluation. The outcomes of the research consist of publicly available planning tools for identification, evaluation, and prioritization of ES-related technology developments whose deployment would contribute to the decarbonization of the rail freight sector.

Advisory Services for MAG ABM-DTA Integration – Phase II Arizona State University, Maricopa Association of Governments

To support strategic and operational planning of transportation and mobility in fast-growing Maricopa Country, the Maricopa Area Government (MAG) is engaged in the development and application of a state-of-the-art integrated Activity-Based Model (ABM) and Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) modeling system. Given the magnitude and complex nature of this undertaking, MAG is seeking guidance and quality control on the development process from the Northwestern University Transportation Center (NUTC), in cooperation with researchers at the Arizona State University. NUTC has considerable experience in the methodological and software implementation aspects of such tools, having been engaged in the development of an integrated ABM-DTA system for the multimodal network of the Greater Chicago area, in addition to numerous applications of advanced modeling tools to large-scale networks, including to the New York region’s best practice model network. The collaborative effort under this contract will involve an advisory role on the framework development for the integrated ABM-DTA modeling system, guidance on DTA software and ABM platform enhancement, design of the development and implementation plan, as well as quality control of the ABM-DTA integration project.

Analysis of Metra Rail Commuter Service Contraction Impact on Regional Mobility Using Integrated Multimodal Network Modeling Platform

Northeast Illinois Regional Commuter Railroad Corporation

Metropolitan areas the size of Greater Chicago could not function without effective multimodal transportation networks and services that provide businesses access to large pools of qualified employees, and residents the ability to access employment and other opportunities.

Regional rail services offered by Metra are integral to the Chicago area’s economic well-being and to the mobility of area workers and travelers. By providing an efficient alternative to the region’s chronically congested highway network, Metra services enable large numbers of area residents to commute to and from their place of employment, access the world-class amenities offered by a global metropolis, and remain connected to their geographically dispersed social ties. The objective of this study conducted by Northwestern University Transportation Center (NUTC) researchers is to provide an independent quantitative assessment, using state of the art methodologies, of Metra’s contribution to personal mobility in the context of the Chicago metropolitan highway and rail transportation network. In this process, NUTC will build upon a state of the art multimodal network modeling methodology (NU-TRANS) originally developed in conjunction with the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) to examine the impact of various hypothetical service reduction scenarios. The developed approach can also be used to evaluate evolving scenarios in the Next Normal emerging in the post-pandemic period.

In collaboration with colleagues at KAUST, the Northwestern University Transportation Center investigators will develop algorithms for real-time shared autonomous fleet operations under different business models, intended to run at scale. These consider various possible scenarios for providing seamless Mobility as a Service (MaaS) with automated vehicles in a connected environment, allowing for high levels of service with minimum environmental impact, e.g., through electric powered vehicles. The team will (1) formulate the various scenarios of interest, with regard to the type of MaaS models, e.g. on-demand only vs. allowing reservations, use of heterogeneous vehicle fleets, degree and conditions for sharing rides, among others; (2) develop mechanisms to integrate personalized information from connected travelers to improve the quality of service delivered to customers; (3) investigate use of machine learning algorithms for predicting demand and performance of the system; (4) develop algorithms for solving the resulting formulations in light of the highly dynamic, stochastic and combinatorial character of the problem; (5) test the approaches developed in a representative problem setting; and (6) provide recommendations on most promising MaaS service concepts along with directions for robust solution methods for at-scale deployment.

The work will take place over a two-year period, with the first year focused on conceptualization, formulation

and small example testing, and the second focused on algorithm development and large-scale development and application.

Evaluating the Potential of Urban Air Mobility Service to Airports

Old Dominion University Research Foundation, Federal Aviation Administration

Support for PhD student Christopher Cummings -- Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Graduate Research Award for applied research in public-sector airport-related aviation issues. The winner presents final research papers at TRB Annual Meeting.

Fundamentals of Travel Time Reliability Guide

Federal Highway Administration, US Department of Transportation (w. Leidos Inc.)

Travel time reliability (TTR) is a principal focus of the second strategic highway research program (SHRP2). The reliability program took shape and matured under a central notion: successful transportation planning and operations considers the full range of conditions travelers encounter as they go about their daily business. This means abandoning well-worn habits of using average outcomes (e.g., average volumes or average travel times under “typical” conditions) and single measures as the basis of quantifying performance.

Travel time reliability has been received favorably, in large part because practitioners accept that congestion and long travel times are associated with a variety of factors such as weather, incidents, and demand surges, whose time and places of occurrence are unpredictable. Despite the maturation of reliability under the SHRP2 program over the past several years, FHWA has found that practitioners, researchers, and advanced users of the reliability tools are not well-versed in the probabilistic thinking.

Estimation of Travel Time Distributions Along User Defined Travel Paths

Federal Highway Administration, US Department of Transportation (w. Leidos Inc.)

Travel time reliability is an important quality of service indicator that affects user satisfaction in a transportation network and impacts travel and activity choices. Unreliability imposes economic costs that directly impact the decisions of logistics firms and delivery vehicles, and the service levels ultimately experienced by shippers, firms, and consumers. User-centric performance assessment should incorporate measures of travel time reliability at the level of a path chosen or travelled by the user. This project brings together recent advances in data availability and probabilistic modeling techniques towards estimating travel time distributions for any path in a given network with variable travel times experienced along individual links and junctions in the network. The methodology and tools developed in this project are intended to synthesize and replicate traveler-based distributions of travel time along continuous paths regardless of facility type. Estimated travel time distributions at the path level enable computation of any reliability indicator of interest, which can inform user decision making and help evaluate the performance of the system from a user reliability-based perspective.

KAUST: Autonomous Connected Clean Electric Shared Services

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

Implementation of Analysis Modeling and Simulation Tools for Road Weather Connected Vehicle Applications

Federal Highway Administration, US Department of Transportation (w. Leidos Inc.)

The FHWA Road Weather Management Program helps develop and deploy advisory, control and treatment strategies that help agencies respond to adverse weather conditions by providing traffic advisories and warnings to travelers, controlling the flow of traffic on the highways, and performing maintenance and operations actions to clear the roads of obstruction. A recent focus of the program is using mobile observations and connected vehicle data to support weather-responsive traffic and maintenance management.

Adopting weather-responsive traffic and maintenance management strategies that use road weather data from Integrating Mobile Observations (IMO) and connected vehicle technologies, combined with informed decisions stemming from Pathfinder, will enable State and local agencies to be proactive and manage the system before negative impacts occur. In addition, more accurate and location-specific road weather condition data will allow appropriate traffic management strategies to be deployed where they are needed and reduce the costs associated with winter maintenance.

Developing Analysis Modeling and Simulation AMS Tools for Connected and Automated Vehicle CAV Applications

Federal Highway Administration, US Department of Transportation (w. Leidos Inc.)

Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) technologies offer potentially transformative societal impacts including significant mobility, safety, and environmental benefits. The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) has led the development, research, and standards making of these technologies and is currently developing deployment approaches and guidance.

For CAV applications to be deployed, state and local transportation agencies must first be able to effectively and fully quantify the impacts of such deployments and identify which application best addresses their unique transportation problem. Traffic analysis, modeling, and simulation (AMS) tools provide an efficient means to evaluate transportation improvement projects prior to deployment. Current AMS tools are not well-suited for evaluating CAV applications due to their inability to incorporate vehicle connectivity/communication and automated features. Guidance on how these AMS tools can be extended to evaluate CAV applications is non-existent. Likewise, deployment concepts, strategies, and guidelines are needed to allow states to understand how and where CAV technologies may effectively be deployed. Although several research projects, sponsored by FHWA and others, have modified available commercial models to include some connected automated features, there has not been a basis for validating their results, sharing the modified model with others, nor sharing “lessons learned” from detailed use cases – all of which are needed for deployment support.

Integrated Modeling for Road Condition Prediction IMRCP Phase 3

Federal Highway Administration, US Department of Transportation (w. Leidos Inc.)

The Integrated Modeling for Road Condition Prediction (IMRCP) project created a tool that incorporates real-time

and/or archived data and results from an ensemble of applicable deterministic and probabilistic forecast models (e.g. – road weather, traffic, work zones, incidents, etc.) and fuses them to predict the current and future overall road/travel conditions for travelers, transportation operators, and maintenance providers.

In the initial phase of the project, the Concept of Operations and Detailed Requirements were created. In Phase 2, the System Architecture, System Design, Test Plans, Installation Guide, User Guide, and Marketing materials were created. Additionally, the IMRCP was deployed over highways and arterials in the southern part of the Kansas City Scout area. The study area is made up of 2006 links, 870 nodes, and 188 bridges. Data in the study area is collected from 205 traffic signals, 105 traffic detectors, 53 ramp detectors, 15 dynamic messaging signs (DMS), 20 StormWatch sites, 5 Advanced Hydrological Prediction System (AHPS) stations and an Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) station.

David Morton

UT Austin Vaccines Planning Tool: COVID-19 Modeling Accelerator (CMA)

University of Texas Austin, John Hopkins University

The University of Texas at Austin (lead organization) is teaming with Northwestern University and the Texas Advanced Computing Center. The two-part goal is to build a decision-support tool that (1) quantifies and visualizes coverage of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines to identify geographic, socioeconomic and other gaps and (2) optimizes allocations of available and future vaccines to close such gaps and ensure equitable coverage of vaccine priority groups.

Value-focused Robust Optimization for Disaster Response

Arizona State University, Department of Homeland Security

The focus of the proposed project concerns logistics for responding to a disaster such as a hurricane, building on the results of a prior project by the PIs. Predominately, the paradigm in developing a decision-support system (DSS), including one for disaster response, is to first formulate a set of scenarios using available data or forecasts. Sometimes these are simply a handful of plausible scenarios, and other times the scenarios are derived from a more formal probabilistic model, which is fit to available data. Subsequently, these scenarios are fed into an optimization model, or a simulation-optimization model, which captures the “physics” of the underlying systems, which in our setting involve the transportation system and the

liquid-fuel supply chain. The optimization model provides recommendations regarding a proactive response plan, e.g., how to deploy emergency responders, how to dispatch a fleet of diesel-fuel tank trucks, and how to advise populations evacuating.

The proposed project will deviate from this main-stream paradigm by integrating the fitting of the probabilistic forecasting model and the DSS’s optimization model. The key driver behind the need for this integration is that in the approach sketched above, we first minimize the errors in our forecasting model. However, this process completely ignores which errors in the forecasting models make a difference in the optimization model. For example, a large error in the forecast for diesel fuel demand in a particular county is arguably unimportant if it does not have a significant impact on the logistics decisions we make, or more precisely a significant impact on the value of key performance metrics associated with these logistics decisions. Put simply, our goal is to focus on differences that make a difference, i.e., to focus on how the statistical errors in our forecasting models impact the quality of the decisions we recommend.

CSP Real-time Operations Optimization Software Alliance for Sustainable Energy, Department of Energy

This project seeks to improve on the existing optimization model by: (i) working with sub-hourly time steps; (ii) incorporating information regarding plant performance into dispatch decisions; and (iii) modeling opportunities in both day-ahead and intra-day energy markets when optimizing dispatch policies. These enhancements will create a decision-making tool that (i) considers the system as a whole, making the appropriate trade-offs between short-term profit and long-term maintenance costs while accounting for electricity market opportunities at multiple time scales; (ii) standardizes operating procedures; and (iii) produces software that can be implemented in the field and for real-time operations. This, in turn, will lead to an increased understanding among operators and utilities regarding the capabilities of CSP systems, an established standard for identifying and executing optimal operations schedules, and a decision-making tool with the capability of system-wide optimal determining minute-to-minute operating strategies.

Development of a Real-Time Decision Support System for Proactive Response, including Recourse Planning, under Uncertain Active Cascading Emergencies Arizona State University, Department of Homeland Security

The overall project involves developing algorithms, procedures, and visualization for a real-time decision system (RTDS) that will assist emergency responders–federal, state, and local–to coordinate and proactively respond to

disasters and emergencies (D&E) that are cascading in a highly uncertain manner. Natural disasters, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, tsunamis, floods, severe storms, etc., typically impact large areas, and these impacts cascade in time and space. When predictions of impact can be made with little uncertainty, “what-if” scenario prediction (often through simulations) can be made and good response plans can be developed. However, when predictions of impending D&E are highly uncertain then a response strategy is needed in which response resources and responders, and associated recourse actions, are mobilized as the impacts of the D&E event, and its cascading effects, become clearer over time and our predictions improve.

Barry Nelson

Collaborative Research: Adaptive Gaussian Markov Random Fields for Large-Scale Discrete Optimization via Simulation

National Science Foundation

The investigators propose to create theory and algorithms to solve large-scale constrained DOvS problems that deliver strong optimality-gap inference at termination, and that exploit efficient computational linear algebra tailored to high-performance computing environments. Our methods are specifically targeted to go beyond the range of current rigorously justified methods.

Green Simulation: A Methodology for Reusing the Output of Past Computer Simulation Experiments

National Science Foundation

The proposed research will involve designing, analyzing, and testing algorithms for computer simulation experiment design and analysis. The objective is to improve the computational efficiency of simulation experiments in settings where there is a sequence of repeated experiments using the same simulation model with different inputs. The proposed algorithms will improve efficiency of later experiments by storing and reusing the results of earlier experiments. In contrast, standard practice is to perform and analyze every experiment in the sequence separately, throwing the results of one experiment away as soon as it delivers an answer. The methods to be employed to reuse the results of experiments include simulation metamodeling and variance reduction techniques for stochastic simulation. In designing and analyzing the resulting algorithms, we will leverage existing knowledge on simulation experiment design and analysis, including optimal design of experiments, metamodel validation, and adaptive design of sequential experiments. The proposed algorithms will be tested in computer experiments using examples, which are representative of realistic applications, of sequences of simulation experiments using the same simulation model but different inputs. In each example, the efficiency gain generated by the proposed algorithms, compared to standard practice, will be measured in terms of reduced computational cost given a target accuracy, or in terms of increased accuracy given a fixed computational budget.

Yu Nie

Toward an integrative approach to machine learning for traffic management

National Science Foundation

The enormous success of machine learning (ML) in the past decade have prompted many engineering fields, transportation included, to attempt to marry it with their respective domain methods. In particular, recent efforts have revealed great potentials of ML in solving hard combinatorial optimization problems, which are similar in spirit to traffic management. The overarching goal of this project is to propose, formulate and experiment with an integrative approach to applying ML in traffic management. An integrative approach tailors the principles of ML methods––rather than prepacked toolboxes––and immerse them with the domain knowledge to create new, hybrid methods.

EAGER: Collaborative Research: An Autonomous Modular Vehicle Technology-based Multifaceted Mobility Service Paradigm – A Proof-of-Concept Study

National Science Foundation

This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project supported a proof-of-concept study to (1) understand the fundamental trade-offs in Autonomous Modular Vehicle Technology (AMVT) based bi-modality system, or AMVT-BM, that provides integrated public transit and last-mile logistics services with a fleet of modular autonomous vehicles, or pods, and (2) gauge potential stakeholders’ interest and reaction to the technology. In this study, the researchers focused on two fundamental questions: (1) what are the impacts of co-modality and modularity on system performance? And (2) what are synergistic potential and adoption challenges from the perspective of stakeholders such as transit agencies, urban planners, logistics companies, transportation network companies, and auto makers? The research agenda consisted of two tasks: Task 1 investigated the impacts of modularity and co-modality via analysis and simulation; and Task 2 recruited and surveyed potential stakeholders for their views on a wide range of issues related to the adoption of AMVT-BM. The project aimed to create a suite of optimization tools for analyzing modularized transit and last-mile delivery service systems and develop the first of its kind simulation testbed to guide the design and evaluation of an AMVT-BM system that integrates transit and last-mile delivery operations.

SCC-PG: Improving healthcare access in marginalized communities through smart connected technologies National Science Foundation

This Smart Connected Communities Planning Grant project aims to leverage the power of smart connected technologies to better meet the health care needs of the com-

munities that are both under-served in health care needs and transportation-disadvantaged. The project will pave the way for exploring the holistic design, deployment and evaluation of a Smart Health Assistance and Resource Portal (SHARP), based on novel methods addressing the joint needs of communities for transportation and health. SHARP is envisioned as both an interface through which patients are engaged with the health system for care and information, and as an engine that guides and monitors health care needs, recommends, and schedules health services, and designs and coordinates an integrated transportation service. The project will identify and tackle behavioral, computational, and organizational challenges posed by SHARP that demand integrative research spanning across both social science and technology domains. To this end, we put together a team consisting of mobility, informatics, health, and human behavior experts. The project will build relationships with large communities to (i) develop a collaborative team of transportation service providers, community organizations, and individuals receiving healthcare in Chicago; (ii) foster an understanding of needs, priorities and barriers related to healthcare and mobility (and their connections) via discussions with community members, and practitioners in the mobility and health advocacy areas; (iii) co-design possible future solutions and technology-driven interventions that address the identified transportation and healthcare access challenges, and (iv) build a partnership for a meaningful future local pilot study, in which we design, develop, and test the solutions outlined in (iii).

Rethink Ride-hail: From Understanding Limits to Reaching Full Potential

National Science Foundation

Ride-hail is front and center in the future of mobility. The last decade witnesses the spectacular rise of a disruptive innovation in this industry: the so-called e-hail service pioneered by Uber and Lyft. Unlike conventional taxis hailed off street (or s-hail), e-hail connects passengers and drivers to make exclusive personal auto trips through their smart phones. E-hail service providers are poised to dominate the era of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) as they strive to replace not only taxis, but also most (if not all) private automobiles. The objective of this project is to better understand the physics and economics of ride-hail through data-driven analysis and modeling. Built on this foundation, it further aims to explore the limits of ridehail, and analyzes operational and policy decisions prescribed to reach its full potential. The project is motivated by a surprising preliminary finding. It indicates that e-hail is a mixed blessing: the technology increases the total factor production of the industry by more than an order of magnitude, but also produce an unintended consequence that substantially reduces its returns to scale.

PFI:BIC – Smart CROwdsourced Urban Delivery (CROUD) System

Co-PI: Blomberg Stathopoulos, Amanda National Science Foundation

The underlying thesis of the CRowd-sourced Urban Delivery (CROUD) technology is the ability, enabled by recent advances in communication and ubiquitous mobile computing, to match highly fragmented transport capacities with vastly diverse demand for urban deliveries, temporally, spatially and in real-time. While CROUD is currently being deployed in various forms, many aspects of this technology have not yet been rigorously studied. To claim a niche market in which it can thrive and even dominate in

the long run, the existing CROUD platforms need rigorous business analytics and operational tools and to more effectively engage humans – namely shippers (i.e. consumers) and carriers (i.e. couriers) – in the system. The overarching goal of this project is to enhance and expand the capabilities of the CROUD technology so as to provide a smarter, faster, and greener solution to the last-mile delivery puzzle that is challenging not only transportation professionals but indeed the entire retail industry. To this end, a new Partnership For Innovations (PFI) is proposed to forge collaboration between a CROUD-based technology firm, namely Zipments, and two research universities, Northwestern University (NU) and University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). The proposed partnership will bring together Zipments’ technical group (including its CEO and co-founders) and five researchers with diverse expertise to develop intelligence that aims to transform existing CROUD platforms into smart service systems. Specifically, the envisioned smart CROUD system will be built on four interconnected subsystems that encapsulate, respectively, pricing/matching mechanisms, consumer/courier management strategies, collaborative delivery/routing algorithms and real-time data collection and analysis tools. Prototypes of these new systems will be implemented and evaluated on Zipments’ CROUD platform.

Kathryn Jean Reid

Alterations of Sleep and Circadian Timing in Aging Co-PI: Turek, Fred National Institute on Aging

The application focuses on the interactions between peripheral tissue clocks, sleep and centrally regulated circadian rhythms in the age-related increase in metabolic disease. A multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional (Northwestern and U of Chicago) approach combining basic (Project 3), translational and clinical (Projects 1 & 2) studies will employ genetic, biochemical, molecular, and integrative physiologic approaches to determine the role of age-related clock system disruption on the deterioration of cardiometabolic health, sleep, and circadian rhythms in aging. In addition, Projects 1 and 2 will test the hypothesis that interventions aimed to enhance clock function will decrease the risk or severity of metabolic disease in older adults.

Strengthening Circadian Signals to Enhance Cardiometabolic Function

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

The current rapid growth of the aged population and of the prevalence of age-related chronic disorders, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, coupled with advances in the scientific knowledge of circadian biology and the evidence of circadian disruption with aging, indicate the transformative potential of circadian based strategies for maximizing healthy aging. In this application, we propose to build on this growing knowledge and our expertise and experience in circadian biology, aging and clinical research to advance our understanding of the interaction between centrally regulated circadian rhythms, sleep, and peripheral tissue clocks in cardiometabolic aging and to translate these findings to interventions to enhance circadian rhythmicity, and thus improve sleep and cardiometabolic health of older adults.

Joseph Schofer

Quantitative and Qualitative Methods for Capturing the Impacts and Value of NCHRP Research

Texas A&M Transportation Institute, Federal Highway Administration

This project will develop and test a methodology for tracking and assessing the effects of research sponsored by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), which is funded by the collective state departments of transportation and managed by the Transportation Research Board (part of NASEM). The Northwestern role will be to share in the leadership role to develop the evaluation strategy, including data capture, metrics, and interpretation of the results. Northwestern will take responsibility for organizing and conducting, along with other members of the research team, a series of case studies that will be deep probes into the adoption, implementation, outcomes and impacts of specific NCHRP research projects completed over the past decade. Northwestern will contribute to and edit the final report and other products of this research.

Karen Renee Smilowitz

EAGER

ISN: Unraveling Illicit Supply Chains with a Citizen Science Approach

University of Notre Dame, National Science Foundation

Illicit supply networks by their nature do not advertise, register, or obey regulations. They avoid or circumvent enforcement activities by falsifying packaging and regulatory paperwork, changing payment and distribution pathways, shifting their location of operations, or by changing from one product to another. However, they can be traced through chemical signatures inside the products. Consider the process of making fake medicines: if the pills do not contain the correct API, they still have to contain something--typically, a cheap white powder that is easy to handle and form into pills. Tracking the active ingredients and fillers can help to identify different batches of illicit products (including street drugs) as they enter the market. In order to maximize the utility of knowledge about entry of deceptive actors into markets, we want to track the chemical composition of falsified medicines and street drugs at the post-market level in close to real time. In order to do this, we will use a new lab-on-paper tool to enable wide participation from citizen scientists. Our goal is to reveal within weeks the entry of falsified pharmaceutical products into markets in resource-constrained settings.

Exploiting Network Structure in Routing Problems: Applications to School Bus Routing

Co-PI: Chopra, Sunil

National Science Foundation

Across the United States, public school districts are facing critical budget crises [5, 24]. Aiming to keep cuts “away from the classroom”, bus transportation is often a common area to look for cost reductions [33]. This is the case at Evanston/Skokie District 65 (D65), a pre-K - 8 public school district north of Chicago with approximately 8,000 students at 18 schools (attendance area elementary schools, middle schools, magnet schools, an early childhood center, and a school for students with special needs). The school district has projected deficit of over $100 million over the next ten years [14]. In 2015, D65 and

Northwestern University began a partnership to improve transportation operations, looking for opportunities to save costs while maintaining service. This partnership identified a number of challenges and opportunities in bus transportation which motivates the work described in this proposal. School bus routing has been studied by the operations research community for fifty years, identifying creative routing and scheduling approaches for school districts. In recent years, school districts have adopted routing and scheduling software to assist in bus transportation planning. However, such software can be limited in application. In this work, we take a different approach. We exploit the grid-like network structure common in many urban and suburban school districts to obtain simple solution approaches that can provide robust options to budget-challenged school districts. As such, this work contributes to a growing literature on routing problems with special network structure, while, at the same time, addressing a critical problem faced by many public school districts.

Improving Veterans Referrals by Optimizing Network Design in Response to COVID-19 Army Research Office

This research will extend the current study of 26 education-based community networks to examine 17 veteran and military service referral networks under the AmericaServes umbrella. This move extends the project to examine another type of network (i.e., a referral network) and another social context (i.e., veteran, and military family services). Second, responding to the new demands placed on human service networks by the COVID-19 response, this research will examine how veteran and military service networks adapt to a surge of new cases. Third, as a way to reduce the bottleneck that hub organizations may create in referral networks, it will examine the transition from a centralized network to a hybrid network form.

PFI: AIR-TT SAFE (Situational Awareness for Events): A Data Visualization System

National Science Foundation

This Accelerating Innovation Technology Translation project seeks to expand the initial development and deployment of a data visualization system for mass participation endurance running events to the wider market of emergency management for mass gathering events. Our system is the first comprehensive dashboard for endurance event management. The system provides a dynamic representation of the flow of people and resources. At the core is a simulation tool that predicts and displays runner density on the course.

Fred Turek

Effects of Spaceflight on Gastrointestinal Microbiota in Mice: Mechanisms and Impact on Multi-System Physiology

NASA Ames Research Center

This proposal in response to NNH14ZTT002N NRA “Research Opportunities for Flight Experiments in Space Biology” is intended to examine the potential role(s) of disruption of microbial communities in the gut (dysbiosis) in mammalian adjustment to the space environment. Many challenges to mammalian physiological homeostasis present in the space environment are known to create dysbiosis. Similarly, immune, or inflammatory changes, including metabolic changes observed with time in spaceflight may be attributable in part to dysbiosis. A series of experiments in mice will be carried out to define changes in microbiota as a function of time in space, diet, and host genotype; relate these changes to gene expression (by RNA-seq) and physiological changes in serum, colon, ileum, spleen, liver, and fat as well as sleep/wake and feeding behavioral changes. Extensive use of ground based studies will be used to support the analysis and interpretation of spaceflight data. Five projects at three institutions will focus on different aspects. Project 1 (University of Illinois at Chicago, PI: SJ Green) will carry out metagenomic sequencing of microbiota from fecal samples and cecal contents (including from the tissue sharing opportunity); Projects 2 and 3 (Rush University Medical Center, PIs: A Keshavarzian and C Forsyth) will use gene expression, physiological and histologic measures of gastrointestinal and immune function respectively; while Projects 4 and 5 (Northwestern University, PIs: FW Turek and MH Vitaterna) will focus on metabolism and circadian behavioral organization respectively. Dr. Turek (Northwestern) will provide Principal PI oversight. These studies are in alignment with NRA Research Emphases 1)“Spaceflight Omics Studies” and 3)“Understanding How Complex Organisms Adapt to Spaceflight”.

The Microbiome and Responsiveness to Stress: Countermeasure Strategies for Improving Resilience to Sleep and Circadian Disruption

University of Colorado, Office of Naval Research

Emerging evidence indicates that the gut microbiota influences human physiology and behavior with important implications for health, cognitive and affective function, and responses to stress. However, which specific microbes or microbial community structure are associated with positive and negative physiological and behavioral host responses to stress are largely unknown. Increasing our understanding of the microbiota’s role in the stress

response and of microbiota-host interactions is important for the development of effective countermeasure strategies to improve stress resilience. Members of the investigative team have preliminary data showing that sleep and circadian disruption, as well as negative affective stress alter the gut microbiota. We propose to address primary objectives of ONRFOA 14-012 testing operationally relevant combinations of behavioral and environmental stressors (e.g., fear, anxiety, temperature stress, sleep deprivation, circadian disruption) on the gut microbiome and microbial metabolome and associated changes in host responses to such stressors. Furthermore, we will characterize individual differences in host stress response and associated changes in gut microbiota and microbial metabolome, and test manipulations of the gut microbiota for improving resilience to stressor exposure.

Brian Uzzi

Project Name: Team Dynamics, Networks, and Assembly (Team DNA)

Co-Pi: Contractor, Noshir University of California at Los Angeles

The aim of this research is to understand the characteristics of successful teams, the leading indicators of impending team failure, and potential policies for increasing the productivity of team science and problem solving. To accomplish these aims we will develop a computational model of team dynamics, networks, and assembly parameterized by real world data on team collaboration.

Collaborative Research: Identifying Reproducible Research Using Human-in-the-loop Machine Learning National Science Foundation

Research quality thrives under healthy skepticism where scientists retest hypotheses creating higher levels of confidence in the original findings and a sturdy foundation for extending work. Recent attempts to sample scientific research in psychology, economics, and medicine however have shown that more scientific papers fail than pass manual replication tests. Consequently, several attempts have been made to find ways to efficiently extend replication studies, including new statistics, surveys, and prediction markets. However new statistics have been very slowly adopted and the high costs associated with surveys and prediction markets makes these methods impractical for estimating the reproducibility of more than a few hundred studies out vast stock of millions of research papers that are used as building blocks for current and future work.

This research aims to develop metrics and tools to help make replication studies of existing work more efficient and one thing more: to help scientists, scholars, and technologists self-evaluate their work before publishing it.

Fundamental Dynamics, Predictability, and Uncertainty of Scientific Discovery & Advance Air Force Office of Scientific Research

This five-year program of basic research will establish a systematic, quantitative framework for understanding the fundamental dynamics, predictability, and uncertainty of scientific discovery. Our interdisciplinary team brings together world-class thought leaders in the emerging area of science of science from a wide range of fields, including the sociology of science, computational social science, network science, complex systems, and artificial intelli-

gence. A defining feature of our proposed program is its mechanistic approach, developing rich mathematical and computational models to unearth fundamental patterns underlying science and its application in technology, armed with big data and digital traces sampling from all phases of scientific production and use. By combining our diverse expertise and approaches, the results from this program will lead to a qualitative shift in the way that knowledge is discovered, science is funded, scientists are trained and nurtured, and excellence is recognized and rewarded.

QUANTA: Quantitative Network-based Models of Adaptive Team Behavior

University of California, Santa Barbara, Army Research Office

Dynamic communication plays a crucial role in key processes of an organization such as coordination, decision making, and information sharing. Research on the temporal dynamics of communication networks has largely focused on identifying endogenous mechanisms of social network decision making. Yet, how social networks respond to external events and how these changes impact the function of the networks has remained largely unanswered even as flexibility and adaptability of a network to changing landscapes of risk are assumed to be one of the great benefits of networks. I propose to construct a framework (theory and methods) that explicates how exogenous volatility affects network structure and network performance.

Hyejin Youn

URoL:EN: Towards a unified theory of regulatory functions and networks across biological and social systems

National Science Foundation

Regulatory organizational networks are a universal feature of human organizations, biological organisms and human-engineered mechanical systems. Unlike human social organizations where the precise structure of these networks are rarely accessible, many organizational principles are well-understood in biological and mechanical systems. Consequently, we propose to use them to provide insight for understanding human organizational principles by building an overarching framework that can be generalized to both human and non-human systems. Our proposed work consists of two major parts: (1) empirical analyses of organizational network costs using a scaling framework, and (2) quantitative theory construction motivated by the empirical analysis, that predicts the cost of organizational networks based on size, functional complexity, and centralized or decentralized organizational type. We will use scaling analysis of empirical data as a point of departure for revealing underlying principles and constructing a theoretical framework. This strategy has been successfully and widely used across biology, ecology, firms and cities, based on analyzing how aggregated organizational properties of a system vary with its size. We anticipate that our hierarchical network-based models will be characterised by three dominant parameters: size, functional complexity of components in the network, and degrees of centralization. Although the organizational network structures are difficult to observe in a large range of companies, we can compare our models’ predictions on the network’s aggregated properties (such as the number of supervisors and depth of hierarchical trees) with that reported in datasets. Finally, we will develop a set of metrics to measure organizational infrastructure’s effec-

tiveness-- how an entity’s organizational costs compared to others, while adjusted for its size, complexity, and organizational type.

Qi Zhu

CAREER: SOlSTICe: Software Synthesis with Timing Contracts for Cyber-Physical Systems National Science Foundation

Software has become critical and drives future innovations for many cyber-physical systems (CPS), however faces significant challenges in its development. At the core of CPS software challenges is timing, which has critical impacts on both functional correctness and various design metrics such as control performance, extensibility, fault tolerance and security. Despite significant advances in capturing timing for CPS modeling and simulation, the synthesis of CPS software remains hindered by timing-related issues: 1) diversity of timing requirements from different design metrics, some with conflicting constraints; 2) complexity of timing analysis under complex scale, hierarchy and concurrency of computation and communication; and 3) uncertainty of timing behavior resulting from dynamic environment, data input and platform conditions. This project proposes SOlSTICe, a software synthesis framework for cyber-physical systems. SOlSTICe will address the timing challenges in CPS by quantitatively exploring timing constraints with respect to multiple conflicting design metrics and across multiple abstraction layers, and using these timing constraints to drive the exploration of design space throughout software synthesis. Building SOlSTICe includes three closely-related research themes: A) multi-metric co-design and hierarchical refinement with timing contracts formulation and exploration, which addresses the challenges from diverse timing requirements and hierarchical design complexity; B) timing-centric holistic task generation and mapping, which explores the generation of software tasks from functional models and the mapping of those tasks onto hardware platforms with holistic timing consideration throughout the synthesis process; and C) function-architecture co-simulation with explicit representation and evaluation of timing contracts, for complementing the proposed analytical synthesis algorithms.

Operator 4.0 via Fatigue and Motion Analyses in Human Digital Twin Enabled Framework for Smart Manufacturing UI Labs, Picatinny Center for Contracting and Commerce

The objective of this research is to develop a new framework for human-centered digital twin towards the construct of Operator 4.0, where new sensing capability and human cyber-physical models are developed to augment operator capabilities, improve their knowledge through real-time performance feedback, and inform micro and macro level continuous process improvement in corresponding production systems. As a crucial link, a smart operator is expected to integrate the physical and virtual assets, to gain knowledge from the digital twin, and in turn to add further intelligence to the system. Particularly, we will focus on the aspect of Healthy Operator 4.0 in this project. The operators will gain real-time feedback on their fatigue conditions and performance indices empowered by state-of-the-art wearable flexible sensors. Based on sensor fusion and backend data analytics, expert suggestions of ergonomics and workflow optimization will be provided to the operators as well as the stakeholders, so that predictive scheduling and

optimal productivity can be achieved (e.g., an operator can be informed of potential fatigue based on prediction even before he/she actually fatigues). The goal is to promote a sustainable and healthy working environment for improvements in safety, ergonomics, operational efficiency, quality, and yields.

CPS: Medium: Batteryless Sensors Enabling Smart Green Infrastructure

National Science Foundation

The proposed effort will develop new methods, algorithms, hardware platforms, and basic science to increase the resilience of coastlines. The work will push forward computer science research in ultra-low power and energy efficient computing, and basic environmental engineering research in novel terrestrial microbial fuel cell design. Specifically, the merits are: (1) develop a Terrestrial MFC Prototype and corresponding energy model for efficient and dynamic energy harvesting in Green Infrastructure, (2) develop a tiny, resilient computing platform that harvests energy and supports sophisticated computing applications and sensing, (3) using this platform, create a framework for conducting on-device machine learning to recognize subtle environmental changes from lossy and incomplete environmental sensing, (4) conduct a series of end-to-end deployments of the technology in partnership with Chicago area institutions to test the efficacy and usefulness of the smart green infrastructure, developing a catalog of experiences and best practices for future endeavours by scientists and researchers in Chicago and elsewhere.

Building Adaptive, Dependable, and Secure Systems with a Cross-Layer Weakly-Hard Paradigm

Office of Naval Research

Many embedded real-time systems, such as those in vehicles, mobile robots, and industrial automation, are bounded by resource constraints on computation, communication, storage, energy, etc. During the design and operation of these systems, there are often strong needs to trade off different system objectives and metrics, for adapting the systems under changing environment and operation context, retrofitting them with new features, updating them with bug fixes, or configuring them for different needs. The objective of this project is to develop a cross-layer framework that enables robust and dependable online adaptation and offline changes (retrofitting) with a weakly-hard timing paradigm. The project will use automotive electronic systems and robotic systems as primary case studies, and particularly explore leveraging weakly-hard constraints to strengthen security protection, improve fault tolerance, or enhance performance under dynamic environment and changing system needs.

CPS: Synergy: Securing the Timing of Cyber-Physical Systems

National Science Foundation

This project aims to build a framework for identifying, analyzing, and defending against timing attacks in cyber-physical systems. Timing attacks, where attackers attempt to compromise the timing of computation or communication operations, can be particularly destructive in a CPS because the correctness of system functionality is affected not only by the data values of operations but also by the time those operations are conducted. To address these types of attacks, this project includes three research thrusts: (A) Identifying and analyzing timing based

attack surface and strategies; (B) Conducting cross-layer analysis of the impact of timing attacks on system-level properties; and (C) Designing and implementing control-based and cyber-security defense techniques for timing attacks. By addressing critical yet little-studied timing-based security challenges for CPS, this project should discover new timing attack surface and threat models, develop novel cross-layer methodologies for analyzing the impact of timing attacks on system properties,

and correspondingly develop novel run-time detection and mitigation techniques as well as design-time strategies. The project focuses on two important CPS application domains, vehicle networks and multi-agent robotic systems (e.g., a group of UAVs or ground robots). Systems in these two domains can both be viewed as multi-agent intelligent systems and share some common elements. application level.

INDUSTRY

RESEARCH AREAS

• Freight, Logistics & Economic Competitiveness

• Data-Driven Operationa & Analytics

• Sustainable Practices

• Safety

• Urban Logistics & Smart Codes

Industry Research

NUTC collaborates with industry partners on novel, high-impact research initiatives that address operational, policy, and technical challenges NUTC engages individual companies through technical “knowledge exchanges ” Throughout 2020, 2021 and 2022, NUTC connected with several associations and companies in the freight, logistics, and transportation industries, including the Association of American Railroads, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), Cintra, Daylight Transport, Matson Logistics, National Science Foundation, and Redwood Logistics

transportation.northwestern.edu/research/industry-research

The U.S. Railroads and COVID-19: Keeping Supply Chains Moving

The rapid onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 marked a challenging time for the country and the U.S. freight industry. Manufacturing slowed, consumer purchasing patterns changed, and for many, shopping moved online. The freight industry suffered a sharp decline in shipments, followed by a surprisingly quick rise. The movement of goods by freight rail had to quickly adapt to meet dynamically changing demand and volatile supply patterns. Despite this disruption, freight rail showed a great deal of resilience and reliability. An NUTC report addressed how the rail industry met the challenge of this whiplash in demand, explored impediments to performance during this period, and looked beyond the crisis towards the future for the rail sector. NUTC’s analysis showed how the U.S. freight rail industry was an essential component of pandemic resilience and demonstrated a high level of adaptability to meet consumer and business demands.

To complete its study, NUTC researchers analyzed rail shipment data that was supplemented with qualitative insights from leading railroads, intermodal (IM) carriers, equipment manufacturers, car leasing companies, shippers, and e-commerce players. What emerged from the analysis was a rich picture of the impacts of COVID-19 on the freight industry, the performance of the logistics system in general, and railroads in particular, along with views of causes, effects, and the future. The results illustrated the inherent value of the freight rail industry to logistics and transportation in the U.S. In-depth interviews with industry leaders and experts revealed that a handful of choke points, many of which did not belong to the freight rail industry, complicated supply chain responses to COVID-19. These choke points included congestion at West Coast ports and terminals nationwide, driven by both physical capacity and labor shortages, alongside inefficiencies in the chassis market. While these contributed to an already challenging logistical environment, ultimately, freight rail kept goods moving when other methods of transport were constrained.

Overall, commodities traditionally carried by freight rail suffered varying fates in 2020. Some products were negatively affected, including energy-related commodities (i.e., coal, petroleum and petroleum products, frac sand), while demand for others grew or rebounded during the pandemic, including grain products and intermodal, respectively. A full report of the findings is available under “Featured Research” at NUTC’s website.

Decarbonizing Rail

The transportation sector is the largest contributor of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the U.S., with the freight sector showing the greatest challenge to decarbonize. However, recent advances in lower-carbon fuels, battery technologies, and hydrogen fuels have provided viable alternatives to diesel for the traditionally hard-to-decarbonize freight rail industry.

NUTC and Argonne National Laboratory researchers collaborated to develop an analytical framework to aid railroads in planning the deployment of alternative locomotive energy technologies across their networks to decarbonize their operations. To make the analysis accessible, a flexible industry-oriented tool called NUFRIEND (The Northwestern University Freight Rail Infrastructure & Energy Network Decarbonization)) was created that caters to individual user needs and provides insights with respect to costs, emissions, and operational performance metrics for the evaluation of various decarbonization deployment strategies. This research was funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) as part of a project titled “Lowering CO2: Models to Optimize Train Infrastructure, Vehicles, and Energy Storage (LOCOMOTIVES).” Several potential users of the tool provided insight through the project and included BNSF Railway, CSX Transportation, Norfolk Southern and OmniTRAX.

The Northwestern University Freight Rail Infrastructure & Energy Network Decarbonization (NUFRIEND) Dashboard open-source tool is available for public use online at the NUTC website: https://nufriend.transportation.northwestern.edu. Users can analyze different decarbonization technologies and deployment strategies on U.S. rail

networks to understand the benefits and challenges of freight rail sustainability investments.

Vaccine Logistics Dashboard

In collaboration with Teradata, a BAC Leadership member company, NUTC researchers developed a vaccine logistics dashboard tracking vaccines delivered and administered as well as vaccine utilization during the response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The project was supported by the National Science Foundation RAPID program. The dashboard was developed by PhD student Sharika Hegde under the supervision of Professors Hani Mahmassani and Karen Smilowitz.

Which Cities Will Thrive in the Next Normal?

Cities are complex living organisms with many interdependent elements. Population dynamics, economic activity, cultural life, financial investment, technology adoption, educational attainment, natural resources (including weather), political environment, quality of governance, and physical infrastructure, among others, all interact to create a region’s degree of economic prosperity and associated quality of life.

In this project, NUTC collaborated with Cintra U.S. to develop methodologies that could provide a basis for rating the prospect of urban areas in the U.S. for sustained economic and population growth in the next 5 to 10 years. NUTC researchers identified a range of relevant databases that could be used to predict the propensity of a given area to achieve above-average growth. Rather than predicating a forecast on descriptors of the existing state -- e.g., current employment, current population, etc., NUTC developed predictive models on the basis of gradients or rates of change experienced over short, medium and long-term bases. This approach offered greater potential to uncover the underlying mechanisms and trends currently underway than approaches that relied only on static conditions.

Spot Price Forecasting Using Machine & Reinforcement Learning

NUTC collaborated with Redwood Logistics to investigate the application of machine learning (ML) algorithms and reinforcement learning (RL) techniques to predict spot prices for freight lanes on a weekly basis. A key challenge in the development of a useful technical approach was the sparse availability of spot price data for individual freight lanes. The technical approach applied allowed for time-series forecasting, the use of covariates and for the occurrence of sporadic data. NUTC researchers investigated and compared the use and performance of multiple off the shelf forecasting tools and methods such as ARIMAX, SARIMAX and XGBOOST, among others, in conjunction with ML algorithms and RL techniques.

In predicting spot prices that are moving in the correct direction from the previous weeks (ex. either up or down), composite models performed better than the simple moving average models for 1, 2, and 3 week forecast horizons. The project results confirmed the benefit of reinforcement learning models to predict spot prices.

Ocean Freight Demand Forecasting Using Machine Learning

NUTC collaborated with Matson Logistics on an exploratory project to predict demand for future quarters for TFEUs for the Hawaiian ocean freight industry using a variety of demographic and economic predictor variables and machine learning techniques. At the time of this project there had been relatively little written in scientific literature about machine-learning time series forecasting methods.

NUTC is working cooperatively with Daylight Transport to develop and implement a driver scheduling platform for Less Than Truckload (LTL) long haul operations. This project follows a prior study that evaluated LTL trucking service network design and investigated the application of rolling horizon optimization algorithms for re-structuring existing operational networks.

Less Than Truckload Long Haul Operations

NUTC worked cooperatively with Daylight Transport to develop and implement a driver scheduling platform for Less Than Truckload (LTL) long haul operations. This project follows a prior study that evaluated LTL trucking service network design and investigated the application of rolling horizon optimization algorithms for re-structuring existing operational networks.

Northwestern is recognized throughout the world as a premier institution for transportation and logistics education NUTC’s interdisciplinary programs prepare students for careers in such diverse fields as transportation operations, planning, engineering, and management Our students graduate into professional roles within a wide array of sectors—public and private, including government, business, independent consulting, and academia

Education Academic Programs

Graduate Programs

Northwestern offers a number of different avenues for students interested in transportation at the graduate level. NUTC currently offers eight academic graduate degree routes.

PhD in Civil Engineering

Sponsored by the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science

The PhD in Civil Engineering with a specialty in transportation is a natural continuation for MSCE students who plan to work in academia or in advanced research and technical studies in industry and consulting.

PhD in Industrial Engineering + Managment

Science

Sponsored by the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science

The PhD program in Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences department is suited for students interested in the development of theoretical and practical tools for solving problems in industry and government. Students enrolled in this program develop research strategies and tools used in scheduling, planning, distribution, design, location, and control.

Master of Science in Civil Engineering (MSCE)

Sponsored by the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science

The MSCE in transportation integrates theory and applied analytical methods of transportation systems, public transit planning, traffic engineering, and environmental, urban, and regional development. This is a research-oriented program, requiring three quarters of course work and a three- to six-month research period resulting in a thesis. After graduating, many students in the MSCE program enter research or consulting fields or pursue doctoral degrees.

Master of Business Administration (MBA)

Sponsored by the Kellogg School of Management

The MBA program’s unique approach to management education balances the study of organizations with the study of the processes that drive consumer, business, and financial markets forward. Kellogg offers fulltime, part-time, and executive MBA programs.

MMM Program (MBA + MS in Design Innovation)

Sponsored by the Kellogg School of Management and the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science

The MMM Program works to develop whole-brained innovators by providing an analytical foundation coupled with a qualitative human centered approach to research, problem framing and concept development. Earning both an MBA and an M.S. in Design Innovation, MMM graduates leverage design and business skill sets to develop and drive end-to-end solutions grounded in desirability, feasibility and viability. This is a full-time, six-quarter program.

Master of Engineering Management (MEM)

Sponsored by the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science

The MEM is an interdisciplinary program providing a foundation in industrial engineering and technology augmented with general business management concepts needed by managers in those fields. The MEM is an eightquarter, evening program.

Master of Project Management (MPM)

Sponsored by the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

The MPD program is designed to prepare technically qualified individuals for responsible management roles in the construction and operation of major engineering projects. Four areas of specialization are available: Construction Management, Environmental Management, Infrastructure Management, and A/E/C Business Management.

Master of Science in Machine Learning and Data Science (MLDS)

Sponsored by the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science

The MLDS program provides data scientists with a technical background in machine learning and artificial intelligence, complemented by the soft skills required to ethically lead. Our graduates are prepared to guide teams, organizations, and society into a future where privacy, equity, and autonomy will be at the forefront of decision-making.

Undergraduate Minor in Transportation & Logistics

The Minor in Transportation and Logistics offers undergraduate students the opportunity to explore the exciting world of transportation and logistics through an interdisciplinary set of courses intended to complement their major and immerse them in the NUTC network .

Barney Gray

Civil Engineering

Jacobs Engineering

Ashna Gupta

Learning Org Change (+Econ)

Roland Berger

Andrew Johnson

Industrial Engineering

Northrop Grumman

Will Painter

Economics

Roland Berger

Roman Sekej

Economics

Mastercard

Michael Bump

Industrial Engineering

Hub Group

Chris Donohue

Geography/ Statistics

Delta Air Lines

Jupe “JJ” Hale

Industrial Engineering

C.H. Robinson

Charlie Marshall

Industrial Engineering

Gerdau Steel

Othman Muhammad

Industrial Engineering

PwC

Anatolia Syed

Industrial Engineering

J.B. Hunt

Adam Clark Economics

Credit Suisse

Noah Holubow

Econ/Data Science/ KSM MA

Strategy&I

Joshua Huang

Industrial Engineering

J.B. Hunt Transport

John Kim

Civil Engineering/ Environmental Policy

MS Transportation Engineering, UC Berkely

Avery Morris

Industrial Engineering

AT&T Technology Development

Dissertation Year Fellows

NUTC awards Dissertation Year Fellowships (DYF) to PhD Candidates in their final year of study, conducting dissertation research on transportation or logistics-related topics

2021

Student Awards and Recognition

2022

Jingyuan Bao

Civil & Environmental Engineering  Controlling for Heterogeneous Rating Scales in the Analysis of Psychological Attitude Factors: Application in Travel Mode Choice and in Fundraising

Pol Boada-Collado

Civil & Environmental Engineering  Dynamic Transportation Procurement with Advanced Demand Information

Hang Shu

Civil & Environmental Engineering  Care to Share? Ridehailing’s Role and Impact in our Communities

Kenan Zhang

Civil & Environmental Engineering  Understand Pooling in Ride-hail: Efficiency, Equilibrium and Management

Hoseb Abkarian

Civil & Environmental Engineering  Optimal Decision-Making for Shared Autonomous Mobility Provision: A Bayesian and Reinforcement Learning Framework

Elisa Borowski

Civil & Environmental Engineering  Behavioral Research for Mobility Disruption Recovery

Divyakant Tahlyan

Civil & Environmental Engineering  Omni-Channel Retailing: Supply Side Evolution, Demand Side Adoption and Travel Impacts

2022 TC Student, IRF Road Scholar / Class President

In 2022, Ph.D. graduate Hoseb Abkarian participated in the International Road Federation (IRF) Road Scholar Orientation at the TRB Annual Meeting. Also, Abkarian was elected president for the 2022 IRF Fellows Class by Professor Hani Mahmassani and received the Gerald P. Shea award.

Greenbriar Undergraduate Fellows

NUTC’s BAC member Greenbriar Equity Group provided financial support to establish the Undergraduate Transportation Research Fellowship to support summer research internships in transportation and logistics for NU undergraduate students

2020

2021

Joshua Kim

Data Analytics Tool Used to Improve Transportation Systems for Public School District Advisor: Karen Smilowitz

Victor Limotitla

Social Effects of Social Distancing Advisor: Amanda Stathopoulos

Taylor Miyamoto-Kim

Views on Autonomous and Alternative Delivery Solutions Advisor: Amanda Stathopoulos

Olivia Sackitey

Minimizing Bus Transportation While Providing Equitable Education Advisor: Karen Smilowitz

Jada Anderson

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Mobility Trends and COVID-19: The Future of Transit Equity Advisor: Amanda Stathopoulos

Tony Luo

Computer Science and Statistics

Evanston / Skokie School District 65 Bus Project Advisor: Karen Smilowitz / Jill Wilson

Marcos Rios

Industrial Engineering and Management Science

To What Extent Does Bike-Sharing Data Reflect Historical Racial Redlining in Major Metropolitan Regions? Advisor: Marco Nie

Noah Slosberg

Industrial Engineering and Management Science

Lane Protection: The Cost of Bus Rapid Transit Advisor: Joseph Schofer

Aliyah Tenner

Computer Science

Evanston / Skokie School District 65 Bus Project Advisor: Karen Smilowitz / Jill Wilson

Executive Education Series

NUTC offers a regular series of non-degree executive courses for professionals in the transportation and logistics industries The Executive Education Series exposes participants to a wide-range of management techniques and decision-making skills to ensure attendees leave the program equipped with what they need to excel in the competitive global business market

Executive courses are taught by leading authorities in their field and provide a rigorous and comprehensive, yet efficient, educational experience These multi-day programs are aimed at decision-makers and investors in transportation and logistics, including shippers responsible for purchasing freight transportation domestically or internationally and those in the logistics, traffic, sourcing, and finance functions Carrier staff and line executives who handle freight operations, marketing, and finances can benefit, as well

Program content is thoroughly integrated by experienced course faculty, ensuring participants emerge with a comprehensive understanding and dynamic perspective of both domestic and international transportation

FREIGHT TRANSPORTATION & LOGISTICS

Accelerating First to Last Mile

September 9 - 11, 2020

COVID-19 has affected transportation operations in fundamental ways, with potentially lasting impact on shippers, carriers, and investors. As Fall 2020 marks the industry’s emergence from a significant decline in domestic and international freight movement, Northwestern faculty and industry experts aim to provide practical insights for managing under COVID-19 and charting the future unknowns as part of a three-day Executive Education program.

NUTC’s Executive Education Freight Transportation & Logistics program has a proven track record of delivering current and forward-looking insight and actionable knowledge into North American and global transportation and supply chains. From domestic transportation (intermodal, parcel and last mile delivery, rail, third-party logistics, trucking) to international (air cargo, ocean shipping, ports), the three-day program provides unmatched insight into how freight moves. Attendees receive a first-hand look at logistics and supply chain trends, while learning to leverage freight management technology and data analytics in order to enhance efficiency and ensure resilience within their respective organization.

Shawn McWhorter

Managing Partner, Justin Zubrod & Co. transportation.northwestern.edu/education/executive-education/

President (Americas Region), Nippon Cargo Airlines

Chris Pickett

Chief Strategy Officer, Coyote Logistics

Woody Richardson

Senior VP, Global Commercial Services, Schneider

Steven Rothberg

Founding Partner, Mercator International LLC

Ian Savage

Professor & Associate Chair, Economics Dept, NU

Jan A. Van Mieghem

Professor of Managerial Economics, Kellogg, NU

Mike Watson

Adjunct Prof., NU / Co-Founder & Partner, Opex Analytics

Barbara W. Wilson

Fmr. Head, Surface Transportation Finance, Wells Fargo Rail

Mark Yeager

CEO, Redwood Logistics

Justin Zubrod

FEATURED INSTRUCTORS

Rick D. Blasgen

Former President & CEO, CSCMP

Mike Brennan

Executive Team, Farmer’s Fridge

Ken Heller

Chief Transportation Officer, DSC Logistics

Tim Jones

Principal, Timothy Jones & Associates

Hani S. Mahmassani

Patterson Transportation Chair / Director, NUTC

Accelerating First to Last Mile

July 13-15, 2021

As the economy continued its rebound from the pandemic and its impacts, global supply chains and domestic and international freight movement remain under pressure to meet consumer and commercial demands. Northwestern faculty and industry experts aim to provide practical insights for managing through the rebound and associated uncertainty, while planning for future unknowns in the next normal in an essential three-day Executive Education program.

Program content is thoroughly integrated by instructors, to ensure participants gain a comprehensive understanding and unique perspective of both domestic and international transportation sectors. Program content is interactive, providing numerous networking opportunities and in-depth discussions with faculty and fellow attendees. Prior knowledge and experience in logistics, transportation and supply chain management will benefit attendees, but is not a prerequisite. This year’s course is specifically designed for early- to mid-level transportation managers, at both carriers and shippers, seeking to deepen their overall knowledge of the freight transportation ecosystem.

Program Topics

Freight Transportation & Logistics Trends

North American Trucking

North American Railroads

North American Intermodal

Third-Party Logistics (3PLs)

Transportation Economics

International Logistics Trends

Air Cargo & Freight Forwarding

Global Sourcing (GS) Strategy

Ocean / Maritime Shipping

Package / Parcel Shipping & Last-Mile Services

Data Science & Transportation Analytics

Emerging Freight Technologies & Trends

Navigating through a Challenging Landscape

May 16-18, 2022 & September 12-14, 2022

Over the last couple of years, the global logistics community has managed challenges across the first, middle and final mile. Longstanding constraints were exposed and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Labor, capacity, energy, regulatory, structural and other issues impacted the freight transportation system across every mode and across all geographies. In this essential three-day Executive Education program, Northwestern faculty and industry experts will provide fundamental knowledge and practical insights for managing through these challenges and beyond.

FEATURED INSTRUCTORS

Mike Burton – CEO, C&K Trucking

Bill Driegert – Head of Operations and Cofounder, Uber Freight

Eric Jakubowski – Chief Commercial Officer, Anacostia Rail Holdings

Timothy Jones - Owner, Timothy Jones & Associates

Hani Mahmassani - Patterson Transportation Chair & Director, Transportation Center, Northwestern

Shawn McWhorter - President (Americas Region), Nippon Cargo Airlines

Steven Rothberg - Founding Partner, Mercator International

Ian Savage - Associate Chair and Professor of Instruction in Economics, Northwestern

Joseph L. Schofer -Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northwestern

Jan Van Mieghem - Harold L. Stuart Distinguished Professor of Managerial Economics and Professor of Operations, Management, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern

Justin Zubrod - Managing Partner, Justin Zubrod & Co.

About the Business Advisory Council

Unequaled by any academic transportation advisory board in the country, the Business Advisory Council (BAC) has long been a major force behind NUTC’s success The BAC is comprised of senior-level executives representing all modes of transportation, including shipper and carrier firms, freight forwarders and third party logistics providers, financial institutions, consulting firms, and trade associations

The BAC is framed by four membership levels: Leadership, Sustaining, Individual, and Association Each category offers specific member benefits, and calls for different degrees of commitment and financial support for NUTC research, education, and outreach initiatives .

Business Advisory Council

Membership Levels

Leadership Level Members are companies that demonstrate an exceptional degree of commitment to NUTC programming through support and participation.

Sustaining Level Members are companies that provide NUTC with the support needed to sustain programming.

Association Level Members are industry groups that actively participate in NUTC programs.

Individual Level Members participate in programs as independent consultants or independent of their company or employer.

Member Directory 2020-23

Leadership Members

Jared Azcuy COO, AGI - Alliance Ground International

Farrukh A. Bezar Senior Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer, CSX Corporation

Jason Birnbaum Chief Information Officer, United Airlines

Joe Boyle Vice President Transportation CACH, UPS

Marcus Brambila Chief Strategy Officer, Coyote Logistics

Shaun Bunch Senior Vice President, Inventory Control & Logistics, Northern Tool + Equipment

Frank Bush Senior Partner, Industry Consulting Travel & Transportation, Teradata Satish Chandra Director, Corporate Strategy, Growth Office, Cummins, Inc.

Bob Chappuis General Manager, Uber Freight

Brandy Christian President and CEO, Port of New Orleans

Vince D’Angelo Associate Vice President | East Geo Communications, Teradata

Sameer Dohadwala GM & Head of Central Operations, Uber Freight

Bill Driegert Head of Operations Uber Freight

John “JT” Engstrom Chief Strategy Officer, FreightWaves

Toby Enqvist Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer, United Airlines

Sean Fahey Executive Vice President, Head of Freight Management, Capstone Logistics

John Fitzgerald Vice President, Business Development, project44

John Friedmann Vice President, Network Planning & Optimization, Norfolk Southern

Craig Fuller CEO & Founder, FreightWaves

Ankit Gupta Chief Air Operations Officer, United Airlines

Gary Hallgren President, Arity Allstate Insurance Company

Brad Hicks President, Highway Services and Executive Vice President of People, J.B. Hunt Transport

Matt Igoe Executive Vice President & Chief Operations Officer, BNSF Railway

Larry Jordan CEO & President, Wi-Tronix

Warren Jones Vice President, Business Development, Alliance Ground International

Gary Kaufman Chief Financial Officer, Wi-Tronix

Brendan Keegan Chief Executive Officer, Merchants Fleet

Jan Krems President, United Cargo, United Airlines

Suresh Krishna President & Chief Executive Officer, Northern Tool + Equipment

Danny Loe Chief Yield Officer, ArcBest

Jett McCandless Founder & Chief Executive Officer, project44

Vaughn Moore President & CEO, AIT Worldwide Logistics

Roger Nober EVP, Law & Corporate Affairs / Chief Legal Officer, BNSF

Jon Panzer SVP, Technology & Strategy Planning, Union Pacific Railroad

Jason Penkethman Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Spireon

Jamie Peters General Director Operating Services, Union Pacific

Chris Pickett Chief Strategy Officer, Flock Freight

Jennifer Rumsey President & CEO, Cummins, Inc.

Eugene D. Seroka Executive Director, Port of Los Angeles

Andrew Silver CEO, MoLo Solutions

Jeff Silver Co-Founder & CEO, Mastery Logistics Systems

Shelley Simpson President, J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc.

Kathleen Smith VP Business Development and Real Estate, Norfolk Southern Corporation

Susan Sweat VP, Global Operations Control; Operations Planning & Eng., FedEx Express

Jeffery Tallman VP Operations Planning and Engineering, FedEx Express

Rick Tomcho President, Capstone Logistics

Doug Waggoner Chairman & CEO, Echo Global Logistics

Nicholas Walker VP of Operations - US East, Canadian Pacific Railway

Tomeka Watson-Bryant General Manager, New Orleans Public Belt Railroad, Port of New Orleans

Johnathan Shaver Founder and Chief Executive Officer, StrategIQ Commerce

Phillip Yeager President & COO, Hub Group

Sustaining Members

Aurelio Pérez Alonso Associate Director & Chief Financial Officer, Mobility ADO

David Arganbright Vice President, Government Affairs, OmniTRAX, Inc.

Andrew Boyle Co-President, Boyle Transportation

Mike Burton President & CEO, C&K Holdings Acquisition, LLC

Ike Brown President & Vice Chairman, NFI

Perry A. Cantarutti Senior Vice President, Alliances, Delta Air Lines

Grace Cerocke

Senior VP, Finance, Matson Logistics, Inc.

Ed Feeley

Managing Director, Littlejohn & Co., LLC

Eli Gross

Managing Dir.; Head, Global Transportation & Infrastructure, Morgan Stanley

Michelle Halkerson President & CEO, Hassett Logistics

James L. Hamilton Managing Director, J.P. Morgan & Co.

Marty Haycraft President & CEO, Progress Rail, a Caterpillar company

David A. Horwitz VP & Executive Director, GATX Corporation

Regg L. Jones Founder & Managing Partner, Greenbriar Equity Group LP

Glenn Koepke Senior Vice President, Customer Success, FourKites

Renee Krug CEO, Transflo

H. Merritt Lane III President & CEO, Canal Barge

Rob Levin Founder & CEO, Republic Partners

Patrick Lortie

Partner & Rail Practice Leader, Surface Transportation, Oliver Wyman

Regis Luther VP, Engineering & Chief Technology Officer, Am General LLC

Eric Marchetto Senior VP, Trinity Industries, Inc.; Group President, TrinityRail

Benjamin J. McLean CEO, Ruan Transportation Management Systems

Shawn McWhorter President (Americas Region), NCA - Nippon Cargo Airlines

Gregg Mitchell EVP and Chief Commercial Officer, Trinity Industries Inc.

Matt Mullarkey Senior VP, Strategic Projects & Planning, CenterPoint Properties

Ben Nimmergut VP, Boeing Commercial Airplanes Engineering, Boeing

Pat Nolan VP, North America, C.H. Robinson

Mike O’Malley SVP, Government & Public Relations, DCLI

Priya Rajagopalan Chief Product Officer, FourKites

Cherilyn Radbourne Equity Research Analyst, Transportation & Industrial Products / Managing Director, TD Securities

Jean Regan President, CEO & Chairman, TranzAct Technologies

Mike Reymann Senior VP & Manager, National Transportation Banking, US Bank

Steven Rothberg Founding Partner, Mercator International LLC

Konrad Salaber Managing Director, Wind Point Partners

Thomas Sanderson Director, Product Marketing, 777, 787, & Confident Travel Initiative, Boeing

Steve Sashihara CEO, Princeton Consultants

Andrew J. Schmidt

Managing Director, Seabury Capital

Paul J. Schneider Managing Director, Schneider

Omar Singh President, Surge Transportation

Jeffrey Walker CEO, North America, CIMC Capital

Daniel Washam SVP & Relationship Manager, Automotive & Transportation, U.S. Bank

Thomas F. Wells President & CEO, TTX

Loli Wu

Managing Director, Head of Global Transportation & Infrastructure, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

James Zubik VP, Finance & Administration, Anacostia Rail Holdings

Association Members

Andrew Bata Regional Manager (North America), Union Internationale des Transports Publics

Mark Baxa President & CEO, CSCMP

Rick Blasgen President & CEO, CSCMP

Individual Members

L. Price Blackford Managing Director, Scott-Macon Ltd.

Michelle Dilley CEO, AWESOME

Jennifer Hedrick Executive Director, National Industrial Transportation League

Ian Jefferies President & CEO, Association of American Railroads

Robert Puentes President & CEO, Eno Center for Transportation

Chris Spear President & CEO, American Trucking Association

Jo Strang SVP, Safety, Regulatory, and Environmental Policy, ASLRRA

John D. Bowe Principal, American Maritime Group LLC

Mike Brennan Advisor, President, Farmer’s Fridge

Vicki Bretthauer Independent Consultant

Edward A. Burkhardt Chairman, President & CEO, Rail World, Inc.

James H. Burnley IV Partner, Venable LLP

Norman Carlson Independent Transportation Professional

Lee A. Clair Managing Partner, Transportation and Logistics Advisors, LLC (Tandla)

Mark G. Fornasiero Managing Partner, Clarendon Group

Andrew Fox President, Overland Limited Associates

Robert Hart Senior Consultant, AllTranstek LLC

Adam Inselbuch Managing Director, South Street Ventures LLC

Edward Jenkins Principal, Strategy & Logistics Consulting

Peeter Kivestu Principal, Oplytix LLC

John G. Larkin Operating Partner, Clarendon Group

Charles B. Lounsbury Former Senior VP, Ryder System Inc.

Robert

E. Martínez VP for Freight and Economic Development, Moffatt & Nichol

Elsy Ocejo

VP of Supply Chain, Illes Foods

Craig

E. Philip Research Professor & VECTOR Director, Vanderbilt University

James

P. Rankin CEO, West Star Aviation

James

A. Runde Special Advisor, Investment Banking Division, Morgan Stanley

BAC Meeting Summer 2020

July 21, 2020 & July 23, 2020 | ZOOM

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, NUTC postponed its spring 2020 BAC meeting to a 2-day virtual meeting in July 2020. BAC Chair Jeff Silver introduced Dean Julio Ottino, McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science, who welcomed the BAC members and thanked them for their continued support of NUTC and the University during a difficult time and commended the great team at the McCormick School for remaining committed to education and research during the spring and summer quarters under COVID-19.

Dean Ottino recognized Director Mahmassani and NUTC for being first to offer virtual programming, exceeding his expectations, with NUTC’s Asychronous Virtual Rountables (AVRs) on supply chains under COVID-19, as well as our subsequent Reopening Our Cities AVR series and other COVID related work on mobility and supply chains. The Dean handed off the virtual lectern to Northwestern Vice President for Research, Milan Mrksich. Mrksich noted that even

Andy Sze Managing

Director & Partner, Fastraxx Group LLC

Barbara W. Wilson Principal, Hill Road Capital LLC

Justin F. Zubrod Sr. Managing Partner, Justin Zubrod & Company, LLC

through COVID-19 constraints, Northwestern’s Office for Sponsored Research processed a record number of proposals, including many related to COVID, and that all research requiring physical lab presence was back in action and all other research at Northwestern continued virtually.

Hani Mahmassani’s spring 2020 Director’s report, “Rising to the Challenge” addressed three challenges: 1) how does a research center survive in a shelter-inplace world?; 2) how does a research center remain relevant in times of unprecedented uncertainty?; and 3) how do we translate these challenges into research opportunities and learning experiences for our students, our researchers, our partner companies and our community of industry professionals?

NUTC addressed these challenges in several ways. First, NUTC hosted nine Asychronous Virtual Roundtables (AVRs) on Supply Chains Under COVID-19 from April 2 through May 28, featuring many BAC members. NUTC also organized five additional AVRs on Reopening Our Cities from July 9 through August 6. NUTC with Professor Sunil Chopra surveyed BAC Members about supply chain resilience twice during the early onset of pandemic shutdowns and stay at home directives. NUTC also tracked highway safety and mobility in Chicago and tackled modeling disease spread and effectiveness of mobility-related countermeasures. NUTC conducted or initiated new

research engagements with industry and agency partners, including Metra, Maricopa Association of Governments (Phoenix, AZ), Matson Logistics (class project) and Redwood Logistics.

Mahmassani highlighted student accomplishments. Two student teams took first and second places at the 2nd Annual Supply Chain Data Analytics Competition at Loyola University Chicago Quinlan School of Business (co-organized with NUTC). Christopher Cummings received a Graduate Research Award Program on Public-Sector Aviation Issues award for the academic year 2020-2021 from the Federal Aviation Administration and Haleh Ale Ahmad was selected for the WTS Leadership Award. Students who graduated with a minor in transportation and logistics landed positions at Jacobs Engineering, Mastercard, Northrop Grumman, and Roland Berger. Four Northwestern undergraduate students were awarded the Greenbriar Undergraduate Transportation Research Fellowship for Summer 2020. Mahmassani also welcomed one BAC Leadership member company (Sleep Number) and two new Sustaining members (FourKites and TD Securities).

BAC Member Super Panel Session – State of the Supply Chain

Hani Mahmassani led a state of the supply chain under COVID-19 panel discussion with Shawn McWhorter (Nippon Cargo Airlines), Roger Nober (BNSF Railway), Gene Seroka (Port of Los Angeles), and Doug Waggoner (Echo Global Logistics).

What is the current state of the supply chain?: Gene Seroka indicated that supply was moving toward fluidity, and cargo volume is at 80-85% normal levels. There were no real bottlenecks in the supply chain. It took 10 quarters to recover from the Great Recession – it was not a good idea to let history replay itself. Doug Waggoner noted that he and his peers were focused on managing their businesses and during this time and saw an entire freight cycle play out in a single quarter. Companies needed to be agile to manage the supply and demand environment. Shawn

McWhorter stated that the supply chain had begun to normalize, particularly as the ocean carriers and ocean trade came back online. Roger Nober indicated that rail had started to see volume come back, but the service was spotty.

What lessons had been learned through the early stage of the crisis?: Doug shared that employees had had a wide range of reactions to work under COVID –it’s nothing worse than the season flu to some, and at the other end of the spectrum, employees are scared to come to work. The lessons learned in real time were figuring out how to get people back to work and economy going, while doing it safely. Gene discussed the importance of having or creating direct to manufacturer relationships to get access to PPEs. The ability of the Port of LA to adapt to the challenge, as well as the support of POLA’s IT staff, enabled them to serve their customers. Shawn noted that they had to modify a lot of their operations – limiting interactions and touches with customers, setting up deliveries themselves, going paperless, and modifying facilities to promote social distancing. Roger noted a strain between office staff working remotely and train operators who had to stay on site. Therefore, there was an effort to get managers back in offices more.

How has the China factor impacted supply chain resilience?: A shift away from China, where possible, was occurring prior to COVID, but COVID highlighted the negative issues of a concentrated supply chain. There has been a trend to other southeastern Asian locations over the last decade. Japan was giving incentives to move away from China to Japan or other southeastern Asian countries. However, the lack of infrastructure in these other areas limited big moves.

Sharpening the Spear: Five Strategies for Winning in the Post-COVID World

Mohan Sahwney, McCormick Foundation Chair of Technology, Clinical Professor of Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, shared five strategies: 1) Snatch up talent; 2) Reskill and upskill your people; 3) Transform internal operations; 4) Accelerate business transformation; and 5) Refocus your value propositions. He said that the COVID pandemic would result in a permanent increase in the use of digital and physical networks to access people, products and places, affecting these changes: 1) Work remotely; 2) Run your business remotely; 3) Buy virtually; 4) Entertain yourself virtually; 5) Order food online; 6) Access healthcare remotely; and 7) Stay fit remotely.

Conversation with Joe Metzger, Senior Vice President, Transportation, Walmart

Hani Mahmassani and Joe Metzger kicked off the second day of the virtual meeting with a one on one conversation and discussed the supply chain and Walmart under COVID-19. The ability to manage your supply chain under crisis comes down to the foundation of your supply chain in the first place. Walmart’s priorities were: 1) Safety of employees and 2) Service to its customers. The strength and training of Walmart’s employees was the number one key to success. And keeping costs in line even during the pandemic was key. Joe noted that building the capacity for home delivery was really a challenge for the entire retail and delivery industry. Looking to the future, Joe advised: 1) focus on the people; 2) pursue perfection in safety, execution to the customer and building a sound cost structure; and 3) deliver a value proposition that delivers to the customer.

Outlook for Private Equity and Venture Capital Transactions in Transportation and Logistics

Justin Zubrod (Justin Zubrod & Co.) led a panel focused on outside investment in the logistics and transportation sector with Price Blackford (ScottMacon Ltd.), Jake Medwell (8VC), and Michael Weiss (Greenbriar Equity Group). Prior to COVID-19, venture capital funding in the sector increased 17-fold in recent years vs 2-fold for overall venture funding. Private Equity firms are invested in roughly 550+

firms in this space in North America -- with 50+ transactions a year. When COVID-19 struck, deal flow essentially stopped. It was an “all hands-on deck” environment with everyone on high state of alert to shepherd cash, restructure for survival, charting the recovery – finding the “bottom” and going from there to succeed in the future. Communication was key – with portfolio executives, investors, customers, employees and the like. That panel agreed than when deals come back, there would be differences in many ways – fewer, more picky bidders, more earnouts and seller financing, perhaps more building internally or co-development with others, minority stakes. All features not very visible in the pre-COVID deal arena. All panelists also agreed that talent was key. Being part of “something bigger” energized the logistics and transportation sector – operators and investors alike have lasting value.

BAC Meeting Fall 2020

November 18, 2020 & November 19, 2020 | ZOOM

BAC Chair Jeff Silver called the Fall 2020 meeting to order at the DoubleTree Hotel in Skokie, Illinois and introduced Dean Julio Ottino (McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science) who joined the meeting via Zoom.

Dean Ottino welcomed the BAC membership and commented on the state of the University. A primary focus at the engineering school and the University had been on human capital – both staff and students. He also

lamented that Northwestern’s hyper-connected face to face courses had become a liability in the virtual experience. The Dean concluded by applauding all of the great work “going on transportation and logistics” during the pandemic.

Hani Mahmassani delivered his Fall 2020 Director’s report, “Delivering the Goods.” NUTC maintained its research and outreach momentum in a virtual environment throughout the summer and fall. NUTC concluded its Asychronous Virtual Roundtables (AVRs) on Reopening Our Cities in August. There were approximately 1500 views for the five Reopening Our Cities and nine Supply Chains Under COVID-19 AVRs. Mahmassani announced a new series of webinars on “telemobility” organized by NUTC’s Telemobility University Transportation Center (UTC), awarded by

USDOT at the end of July. He announced four NUTC dissertation year fellows for the 2020-2021 academic year: Jingyuan Bao, Pol Boada-Collado, Jason Soria, and Kenan Zhang.

Research engagements remained active. In addition to continuing projects with Metra, the commuter rail provider in NE Illinois, Maricopa Association of Governments (Phoenix, AZ), and Redwood Logistics, NUTC launched a new project with the Association of American Railroads to examine freight rail service in the post pandemic environment. NUTC was active in research proposals, including: a USDOT BAA on autonomous vehicle data collection led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an ARPA-E proposal with Argonne National Lab - LOwering CO2: Models to Optimize Train Infrastructure, Vehicles, and Energy Storage (LOCOMOTIVES), featuring advisory support from several BAC member companies.

Mahmassani welcomed J.B. Hunt Transport as a new Leadership BAC member company and NFI, Inc. as a new Sustaining BAC member company. As a new offering for BAC members, he announced the launch of “BAC On Board,” a weekly summary of news articles, editorials, and announcements featuring BAC member companies.

Covid-19 Vaccine Distribution and Logistics

Hani Mahmassani led a panel discussion on development and the status the supply chain for COVID 19 vaccine manufacturing. The participants included, Andrew Boyle (Boyle Transportation), Mike Douma (AbbVie), Robert Murphy, MD (Northwestern University), David K. Robinson, Ph.D. (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), and Bala Sreenivasan (Merck).

Dr. Robert Murphy from Northwestern Medicine indicated that over 80 vaccine were under development in animal studies, 54 were in clinical development, 12 were in Phase III clinical trials and 6

had limited approval. Vaccines with BioNTech/Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZenica/Oxford, Johnson&Johnson, NOVAVAX, and Inovio. Andrew Boyle provided an overview of the two primary distribution channels for the leading vaccine candidates in the United States: 1) the Operation Warp Speed program at the federal government, using an outsourced contract manufacturing strategy and distributing the vaccine through OWS’ approved-distributor, McKesson, which already distributes 150 million vaccines per year; and 2) an in-house manufacturing strategy using an integrator hub distribution (3PL) strategy in partnership with FedEx’s and UPS’s healthcare units. Andrew noted two significant challenges to vaccine distribution: 1) supply chain capacity is “wicked tight,” and 2) the stakeholders have been designing a distribution strategy in parallel with manufacturing in less than a year development cycle in comparsion to typical drug development cycles that can take up to 12 years.

The supply chain leaders from AbbVie and Merck provided the following observations: 1) the less normal of a traditional supply chain path used, the more risk involved, 2) using the one of the three primary distribution channels, such as McKesson, should provide a more reliable supply chain, 3) the Big 3 distributors are not entirely capable of distributing frozen vaccines, and therefore must rely on established pharmaceutical companies, and 4) security of vaccine distribution is essential. David Robinson addressed global vaccine distribution and equity issues and explained that a “covax” facility was set up at the World Bank to ensure fair and equitable distribution of vaccine around the world, including third world countries.

State of the Supply Chain – Super BAC Panel, Part 2

Jeff Silver, CEO, Mastery Systems Logistics engaged a group of Business Advisory Council leaders representing multiple modes of freight transportation. In a break with tradition, the BAC members who included Farrukh Bezar (CSX Transportation), Ben Mclean (Ruan Transportation), Doug Waggoner (Echo Global Logistics), Phil Yeager (Hub Group), were given a case study to debate and discuss. The case involved a leading “widget” company rethinking their off-shore manufacture of raw materials/components and bringing that activity back to specific sites within North America in order to deal with repeated supply disruptions in Asia. After each of the panelists made their “pitch” for handling implementation of the revised strategy, the discussion revolved around several issues including: 1) the unknowns – what still

needs to be learned to make a decision, 2) alternative modes – rail, intermodal, truck, including the use of intermediaries, 3) attractiveness of proposed and alternative sites, 4) the trade-offs, 5) risk assessment and cost and service considerations, and 6) complementary strategies to address cost concerns.

Managing through Disruptions - Conversation with the Airlines

Adam Decaire (Southwest Airlines), Mark Drusch (Qatar Airways), Ankit Gupta (United Airlines), Jessica Tyler (American Airlines), and Khalid Usman (Oliver Wyman) joined Hani Mahmassani in a conversation focused on how the airline industry – both domestic and international – had been impacted by the COVID crisis over the last year. As of fall 2020, the airlines had lost about 70% of passenger volume/revenue. Cargo, however, had grown considerably – but not

enough to off-set the loss in passengers. One of the biggest changes encountered was giving cargo a voice and a seat at the table – in many ways cargo was driving schedules. Traditional ways of planning were no longer valid. And thinking about the future was challenging for a number of reasons: 1) nature of the recovery – not a V shape for airlines, but a gradual climb – creating huge demand uncertainty, 2) health restrictions – particularly the timing and handling of vaccines, 3) unknown future customer expectations and behaviors, and 4) the continued availability of cash – from customers, governments, suppliers. As several panelists put it: “we are seeing a new paradigm” and “the physics/calculus of the airline industry are changing.” Some compared it to post9/11 period that redialed the industry with lasting effect.

BAC Meeting Spring 2021

June 17, 2021 | DoubleTree Hotel, Skokie, IL

BAC Chair Emeritus Justin Zubrod opened the meeting and introduced Dean Julio Ottino (McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science), who welcomed the BAC members and thanked them for their continued support of NUTC and the University. Ottino lauded both Ed Colgate and Hani Mahmassani for their elections to the National Academy of Engineering. He announced that Kellogg & McCormick launched the MBAi Program on September 15, a new, blended approach to business and technology leadership.

Hani Mahmassani gave his spring 2021 Director’s Report, “Expanding the Platform,” explaining that NUTC is both a collaboration platform and a connectivity platform. He began his remarks on the sad note of the passing of our friend and BAC member,

Dick Craig. Dick was the Vice President of Business Development for the North American Chassis Pool Cooperative, LLC (NACPC). Dick was a Chicago-area native who had been residing in Lafayette, California at the time of his death.

Mahmassani addressed research and outreach highlights. NUTC’s US DOT Center on Telemobility and E-Commerce held five Telemobility Virtual Roundtables that addressed mobility and e-learning, telehealth, telework and return to work, e-commerce and e-fulfillment, and omnichannel retail. NUTC was awarded three research projects: ARPA-E (US DOE) project, “LOCOMOTIVES Lowering CO2: Models to Optimize Train Infrastructure, Vehicles, and Energy Storage,” in collaboration with Argonne National Lab and Professor Pablo Durango-Cohen; NSF RAPID project, “Tracking and deconstructing COVID 19 vaccine distribution as an extreme logistics event;” and Illinois Department of Transportation project, “Mobility 4.0 in Illinois: Roadmap for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles” in collaboration with University of Illinois and the Illinois Autonomous Vehicle Association. NUTC completed a white paper for the Association of American Railroads, “U.S. Railroads and COVID-19: Keeping Supply Chains Moving.”

Faculty and student research continued to deliver with many publications, conference presentations, and keynotes in the virtual realm. Christopher Cummings received the Airport Cooperative Research Program Graduate Research Award Program on Public-Sector Aviation Issues, Divyakant Tahlyan received the American Society of Civil Engineers Illinois Section - Transportation & Development Institute Bob Camillone Memorial Scholarship, and Hoseb Abkarian was selected as an International Road Educational Foundation Fellow for the Class of 2021. Mahmassani also acknowledged five undergraduate students selected for the Greenbriar Undergraduate Transportation Research Fellowship for Summer 2021: Jada Anderson, Tony Luo, Marcos Rios, Noah Slosberg, and Aliyah Tenner.

Mahmassani thanked the BAC for its engagement on research projects, proposals and events, notably the AAR project, the NSF Rapid project, and the Telemobility roundtables. He also welcomed AIT Worldwide Logistics, Merchants Fleet and Northern Tool + Equipment as a new Leadership BAC member companies and DCLI as a new Sustaining member company.

Cold Chain Lessons Learned During COVID-19

Karen Smilowitz, James N. and Margie M. Krebs Professor in Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences, led a panel discussion with Andrew Boyle (Boyle Transportation), Chris Duggar (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Vaccine Task Force, Director Distribution & Federal Programs Unit, COVID-19 Response), Manu Jacobs (United Cargo), Captain Joseph W. Parran, II (Supply Corps, United States Navy; Deputy Distribution, Countermeasures Acceleration Group), and Todd Snyder (UPS Healthcare). UPS created single point command centers in the U.S. and Europe in November to manage the process. Duggar echoed the command center approach for managing cold chain distribution at scale and emphasized adaptability as the key to juggling the entire process. Boyle noted that the Pfizer product was shipped at much lower temperatures because it allowed Pfizer to avoid stability tests required for shipping at higher temperature, and thus expedite the distribution process. Jacobs said that United Cargo created a vaccine readiness task force from across the airline including engineers, operations, and safety professionals, among others. United Cargo also employed a “control tower” approach as well to

managing their cold chain operations. A key takeaway was that the U.S. likely needs to look at near-shoring or reshoring some aspects of the pharmaceutical and biomedical product supply chain to improve resilience.

Northwestern Vaccine Logistics Dashboard

Sharika Hegde, Ph.D. student in Transportation Systems Analysis & Planning, walked BAC members through the dashboard and compared vaccine rates across large geographic regions (Western, Midwest, Northeast and the South), as well as by political persuasion and ethnic backgrounds. The dashboard ingested data daily from the CDC and also from state, county and city level websites and dashboards. Mahmassani thanked Frank Bush and Vince D’Angelo at Teradata for their collaboration and access to a Teradata technology platform.

Noshir Contractor, Jane and William White Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, shared a summary of his team’s research on networks using data collected before COVID 19 (Old Normal), during COVID 19 (New Normal) and after COVID 19 (Next Normal). In the old normal, there was an external focus on meetings. During the new normal with remote work, there was an internal company focus on meetings. But in the next normal there seems to be a better balance between the internal and external meeting environment. Post COVID, over half of online contacts are also in person contacts. People are having more contacts online, but with the same people they had contacts previously. Higher performers were more active in reaching out beyond their normal teams, and more active in creating, deactivating and recreating new connections, in comparison to lower performers.

The Next Normal for Teaming: Transitioning Out of COVID-19

Rebalancing the Global Supply Chain Network

Hani Mahmassani revisited our yearlong focus on the global supply chain during and post COVID 19, with a shift in this discussion to the topic of rebalancing the global network during a period of capacity constraints and supply shortages across industries. His panelists included John Friedmann (Norfolk Southern), Ed

McCarthy (Georgia Ports Authority), John McLaurin (Pacific Merchant Shipping Association), and Shelley Simpson (J.B. Hunt Transport). The conversation addressed: what is the current state of the supply chain?; where are we now relative to two years ago in terms of demand, in terms of supply, and in terms or operations?; and where are there shortages that are constraining the economic recovery?

BAC Meeting Fall 2021

November 18, 2021 | Chambers Hall, Evanston, IL

BAC Chair Jeff Silver opened the meeting and introduced Dean Julio Ottino (McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science), who welcomed the BAC membership and reiterated his deep appreciation for the NUTC Business Advisory Council members, noting that the BAC is a unique group on campus and one of Northwestern’s strongest connections to industry. Ottino introduced NUTC Provost Kathleen Hagerty, who shared a welcome from the University.

Hagerty began her remarks by congratulating Director Mahmassani for his recent election to the National Academy of Engineering, as well as recieving the Transportation Research Board’s Roy W. Crum Distinguished Service Award. She explained that a university is a 100% human capital operation requiring the recruitment of the best staff and faculty, growing and nurturing 18 to 22 year olds, while pursuing a more diverse culture. Key goals for the upcoming year included building incubator space in downtown Evanston for biotech research, improving the student experience, and making the university as well-run and efficient as possible, with the caveat that there is always room to get and be better.

Hani Mahmassani presented his fall 2021 Director’s Report, “The Undisrupted Knowledge Chain,” choosing this theme because it captured the ongoing commitment to research, education and outreach that NUTC demonstrated through the COVID

pandemic. He listed four examples that captured this spirit of undisrupted knowledge creation: 1) faculty and students returned to campus full time 5 days per week as part of NU Return to Campus plan, 2) NUTC kicked off four new research projects – with BAC members helping on advisory committees on 3 of 4 projects, 3) NUTC Awarded 3 new Dissertation Year Fellowships for 2021-2002 academic year, and 4) 14 new MS students and 9 new PhD candidates (4 women) started Transportation Systems studies in 2021 - one of the largest PhD classes in recent history.

Mahmassani praised Ann Drake (Kellogg, ’84), founder and president of Lincoln Road Enterprises and former BAC member, for her inspirational William A. Patterson Distinguished Transportation LectureBeyond Transportation Excellence: Lessons from the Pandemic - held the previous evening. Her Lecture highlighted the need for resilient supply chains and the importance of systems thinking and collaboration as the currency for the 21st century.

Mahmassani provided updates on various research projects: NUTC’s US DOT Center on Telemobility and E-Commerce; ARPA-E’s LOCOMOTIVES project developing tools for the analysis of alternative power in class 1 rail networks (with Argonne National Lab); Advancing Air Mobility in Illinois with advisory board participation from Boeing, United and West Star Aviation; Vaccine Logistics Dashboard with Teradata; an examination of cities that are positioned to thrive in the next normal with Cintra US; and Mobility 4.0 and Beyond with the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. He thanked BAC members for their regular engagement on research projects, proposals and events and for their support of NUTC’s Freight Transportation and Logistics executive course, with special thanks to Justin Zubrod.

He congratulated three students for Dissertation Year Fellowship awards: Hoseb Abkarian, Elisa Borowski, and Divyakant Tahlyan. He also praised five undergraduate students for their summer research fellowship projects supported through the Greenbriar Undergraduate Transportation Research Fellowship program: Jada Anderson, Tony Luo, Marcos Rios, Noah Slosberg, and Aliyah Tenner. And he enthusiastically commended six graduating seniors who earned a minor a transportation and logistics and who all found employment in the transportation and logistics sector. Mahmassani welcomed four new BAC companies at the Leadership level: Flock Freight, project44, Spireon, and StrategIQ Commerce.

After introducing new members in attendance, Jeff Silver took pause to reflect on the life and contributions to transportation community by John Ruan III, who passed away on September 11.

Global Supply Chain Insights and Challenges

Chris Pickett (Flock Freight) moderated a panel discussion that included presentations from John Fitzgerald (project44) and Priya Rajagopalan (FourKites) on the “that will set you free” and presentations giving the shipper’s perspective from Sean Barbour (Macy’s), Shaun Bunch (Northern Tool + Equipment), Elsy Ocejo (Bimbo Bakeries USA), and Bill Seliger (Amazon). The speakers shared many insights: Fitzgerald and Rajagopalan on leveraging data to provide visibility into the supply chain, including constraints, bottlenecks, and dwell times; Bunch noted that in retail, “in stock” is the new promotion in 2021 and said his company was only taking “baby steps” with supply chain visibility technologies. Seliger promoted delivering quickly to customers as a competitive advantage, even in the current environment. And Barbour touted a focus on partnerships with suppliers and the importance of transparency.

The Future of Work

Amanda Stathopoulos, William A. Patterson Junior Professorship Chair, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, shared a summary of results from her research team’s survey on return to work expectations that were conducted primarily with private sector companies, most of which were BAC member companies. The survey addressed the following return to work scenarios over a projected timeline: fully-in-person, mostly-in-person, about 50/50; mostly-remote, Fully-remote, and Wait and See. As surveyed in October, responses predicted

that hybrid work would continue to dominate through April 2022, and stabilize with about 60% on-site work. Other results indicated that, productivity trended positive with hybrid work, the ability to innovate trended negative with hybrid work, supervision and mentoring trended negative with hybrid work, and that competitors were viewed to work more remotely.

Industrial Real Estate and the Evolving Supply Chain

Justin Zubrod (Justin Zubrod & Co.) led a discussion with Keith Stauber (Jones Lang LaSalle) that focused on the rapid changes taking place in industrial real estate driven by the rise in e-commerce and ongoing shifts in supply chain networks. Key takeaways included: investment in industrial real estate was at an all-time high in 2021; supply constraints were impacting the ability to build warehouse space for customers; e-commerce real estate demand was leveling somewhat; heavy port activity and demand close to ports was resulting in dramatic rent increases; government could not keep up with regulations to allow for repurposing of other existing real estate; and sustainability was driving future design requirements: e.g. LED lighting, solar panels and EV charging stations.

BAC Meeting Spring 2022

May 5, 2022 | NUTC - Chambers Hall, Evanston, IL

BAC Chair Jeff Silver introduced Dean Julio Ottino (McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science), who welcomed the BAC members and reiterated his admiration for the BAC as being the “gold standard” for industry engagement with the University. He then introduced Annelise Riles, Associate Provost for Global Affairs at Northwestern.

Annelise Riles shared information about Northwestern’s Buffett Institute for Global Affairs and its mission. The Buffett Institute aims to identify “big global problems” and pursue solutions to solve these problems. Examples of projects have included evaluating the PPE shortage from legal, political and engineering perspectives, supporting NUTC’s vaccine logistics project, and the war in Ukraince, including issues of food supply, nuclear energy security and partnering with the Kiev University of Economcs to bring scholars to Northwestern.

The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World--The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science

Hani Mahmassani re-introduced Dean Ottino and addressed him as a “remarkable person – the closest person to a renaissance man at Northwestern.” Dean Ottino gave a brief overview of his book, “The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World--The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science,” that he co-authored with Bruce Mau. The book explores lessons learned through the convergence of thinking across art, science and technology. The two primary themes of the book are: 1) the need to operate outside of your traditional domain and 2) the need to augment your thinking by interacting with other domains of knowledge and learning lessons across domains. The Dean concluded his remarks by charging everyone to “inspire curiosity” in their organizations.

Hani Mahmassani presented his spring 2022 Director’s Report, “The Undisrupted Chain.” Hani recapped the 40th Patterson Lecture that featuring Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, where Bastian addressed the future of business travel, the return of international travel, managing through disruption, Delta’s sustainability strategies and Delta’s focus on closing diversity gaps within its workforce. He also brought attention to the spring 2022 Industrial Technical Workshop, “Rethinking Revenue Management,” that featured speakers from Hyatt, Georgia Tech, Sabre, Teradata and United Airlines.

Mahmassani cited accomplishments of faculty and students, notably PhD candidates Hoseb Abkarian and Max Ng, received the ASCE Transportation & Development Institute (T&DI) Bob Camillone Memorial Scholarship. He congratulated transportation and logisitcs minor students who were about to begin their careers at AT&T Technology Development, Credit Suisse, JB Hunt, and Strategy &.

He provided updates on various research projects, including: 1) NUTC’s US DOT Center on Telemobility and E-Commerce research that focused on next normal for retail, shopping, and telework, including on past, present and future of remote work and hybrid

work that was examined through several employer surveys; 2) ARPA-E’s LOCOMOTIVES project developed tools for the analysis of alternative power in class 1 rail networks. John Lovenburg (in audience) from BNSF was thanked for his assistance; 3) Mobility 4.0 and Beyond research project conducted surveys with the private, public and research sectors and conducted two workshops with similar stakeholders to assess connected, autonomous, electric and sharing technologies for the State of Illinois (over 300 stakeholders engaged); and 4) an NSF sponsored project, “Improving healthcare access in marginalized communities through smart connected technologies,” led by faculty members Marco Nie, Amanda Stathopoulos, and Qi Zhu.

Mahmassani welcomed two new BAC companies at the Leadership level (ArcBest and Wi-Tronix), two new member companies at the Sustaining level (Bimbo Bakeries USA and Hassett Logistics), and two new Association level members (ASLRRA and AWESOME)..

Ports, Ocean Shipping and Global Supply Chain

Joseph Schofer, Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering chaired a panel with Brandy D. Christian (Port of New Orleans), Steven Rothberg (Mercator International), and Gene Seroka (Port of Los Angeles). The discussion covered many ongoing issues in freight flows and the ports and also addressed the following questions: 1) how can ports work to improve the balance/flow of containers throughout the country?; 2) drayage is fragmented – was California trying to outlaw independent contractors in trucking impacts?; 3) how did the US logistics community get so far behind in logistics technology; 4) the shortage of chassis has been a major contributing factor to loss of productivity, why is this not talked about?; and 5) why are we not monetizing (penalizing) dwell times of chassis?

Did the pandemic change shopping habits at retail stores?

Sunil Chopra, Deputy Dean, IBM Professor of Operations Management and Information Systems, Kellogg School of Management, presented insights on changing consumer shopping behavior during the pandemic through research conducted with Partha Sarthy Mishra (Kellogg PhD candidate) and Professor Ioannis Stamatopoulus (University of Texas, McComb School of Business) through an analysis of cell phone mobility acquired from SafeGraph for 2018-21 (~10% of US population). Key takeaways included: the number of visits to retailers seemed to have decreased across all locations during pandemic, but not consistently across brands; home to store shopping distance traveled dropped at the pandemic peak – people were unwilling to travel; shoppers spent more time at fewer shopping desinations; and

shoppers made more purchases during traditional working hours because there was more perceived freedom to do so. However, many behaviors were reverting back to pre-pandemic norms in spring 2020.

Commodity Prices and the Economy

Sergio Rebelo, MUFG Bank Distinguished Professor of International Finance; Professor of Finance, Kellogg School of Management, addressed the inflationary environment. Overall, Rebelo concluded with an optimistic long view, stating that substitutes can be found for certain commodities that become scarce.

Decarbonization – Perspectives from Rail and Trucking

Jennifer Dunn, Associate Professor, Chemical and Biological Engineering; Associate Director, Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience, Northwestern moderated a discussion with Craig Harper (J.B. Hunt Transport), John Lovenburg (BNSF Railway), and Dan McNair (Wabtec). Lovenburg addressed carbon reduction program efforts in intermodal Hub electrification; low-carbon fuels for locomotives, battery-electric locomotives, and various operational strategies. He noted that liquid fuels are high energy density, fast fueling, with an established fueling infrastructure, whereas batteries are less dense, slow charging, and with limited infrastructure installed at present. McNair discussed future locomotive technologies, hybrid diesel-battery consists, and hydrogen fuel cell technologies and the operational impacts of each. Harper shared how information and data technologies are being used for the reduction of empty miles (and could reduce emissions by 60% by way of change of operations). He also noted J.B. Hunt’s use of a significant amount of biodiesel and renewable diesel to reduce emissions.

BAC Meeting Fall 2022

November 17, 2022 | NUTC - Chambers Hall, Evanston, IL

BAC Chair Jeff Silver opened the meeting and introduced Associate Dean for Research Eric Perreault (McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science), who welcomed the BAC members on behalf of Dean Julio Ottino. He referenced a recent review of research centers at McCormick (~25) where NUTC “stood out as one of the shining stars” of the engineering school’s research portfolio, noting the contributing role of the BAC in their assessment.

Following Dean Perreault, Milan Mrksich, Vice President for Research at Northwestern gave an update on the Northwestern research enterprise. Northwestern approached $1 billion in sponsored research funding, which was the largest and fastest growing portfolio in Illinois. Northwestern research had also generated economic impact through 12, 12 and 19 new faculty startups in the three previous years.

Hani Mahmassani gave his fall 2022 Director’s Report, “Never a Dull Moment,” and began by acknowledging two new Leadership BAC member companies (Capstone Logistics and the Port of New Orleans). He thanked retiring BAC member, Roger Nober (BNSF Railway) for delivering the Fall 2022 Distinguished Transportation Lecture, “How Public Policy Affects the Freight Sectors – Lessons Learned from the Public and Private Sectors.” He also brought attention to the fall 2022 Industrial Technical Workshop, “Visibility Through the Supply Chain: Technologies and Best Practices,” that featured speakers and discussion panelists from FourKites, project44, StrategIQ Commerce, Surge Transportation, Teradata, and Uber Freight. He also thanked BAC member Peeter Kivestu for leading the panel conversation.

He introduced two new NUTC staff members: communications coordinator Torene Harvin and financial assistant Marinko Kuljanin. He cited accomplishments of faculty and students, notably Professor Karen Smilowitz, who was named a 2022 INFORMS Fellow, and three doctoral students awarded dissertation year fellowships: Mariana Escallon-Barrios, Maher Said, and Eugene Wickett.

Mahmassani presented NUTC’s research priority areas, including but not limited to: Autonomous, Connected, Electric, Shared (ACES): Towards smart urban mobility; Digital transformation of freight and logistics (Changing patterns in global supply chains); and Data science and machine learning applications in transportation, mobility and supply chains. He provided updates on ongoing research projects: NUTC’s US DOT Center on Telemobility and E-Commerce generated insights on remote work trajectory through the pandemic from the employer perspective; ARPA-E’s LOCOMOTIVES project produced an online dashboard tool, NUFRIEND, a publicly available, webbased, industry-oriented software tool that provides railroads an analytical framework to aid in planning the deployment of alternative locomotive energy technologies across their networks to decarbonize their operations; and the Cintra US project that culminated with the development of an Urban Area Growth Propensity Index.

Hani thanked NUTC faculty affiliates and BAC member company instructors for helping to deliver a successful Freight Transportation and Logistics executive course for 25 government and industry attendees including from BAC member companies ASLRRA, Boeing,

DCLI, Northern Tool and Logistics, OmniTrax, Teradata and Uber Freight.

Freight Logistics Optimization Works (FLOW) as a Data Sharing Model for Logistics

Jeff Silver (CEO, Mastery Logistics Systems) convened a panel with Jason Craig (C.H. Robinson), Jennifer McNeill (True Value Company), Roger Nober (BNSF Railway), Andrew Petrisin (US Department of Transportation), and Gene Seroka (Port of Los Angeles). Petrisin provided a pre-recorded summary of USDOT’s Freight Logistics Optimization Works (FLOW) program. Afterward, Jeff led a discussion with the panelists that addressed the following questions: 1) your goals for your own organization in participating in FLOW?; 2) what data will you be sharing, with what frequency, and how exactly are you transmitting it?; 3) where are you in the process of supplying that data – up and running now or if not, then when?; 4) what goals might you have that are more altruistic in participating?; 5) what is one roadblock you anticipate this program running into, and what would you suggest overcoming it?; and 6) is FLOW a scalable model for public-private data sharing?

Seroka noted that FLOW could be a scalable model for public-private data sharing. Pooling even more data is better, whether this is government led or not. Nober stated that the data supply is still a work in progress (from BNSF), wondered, “can you make better real time for decisions with mass aggregated data?” and where it is scalable with longevity. Craig hoped that CH Robinson’s participation elevated the importance of freight in public policy and was concerned if the importance of FLOW would remain beyond midterm elections. He said USDOT was a good partner and worked at the speed of business. McNeill said that True Value believed corporate participation contributed to the greater good for the country, as well as for general overall awareness of the importance of supply chain issues. She offered that the view into the entire supply chain system through real time data was beneficial for decision making, because information from individual firms alone was not sufficient.

Northwestern University Freight Rail Infrastructure & Energy Network Decarbonization (NUFRIEND) Platform

Doctoral researchers Adrian Hernandez and Max Ng (Civil & Environmental Engineering) presented NUFRIEND (The Northwestern University Freight Rail Infrastructure & Energy Network Decarbonization platform), a publicly available, web-based, industryoriented software tool that provides railroads an analytical framework to aid in planning the deployment of alternative locomotive energy technologies across their networks to decarbonize

their operations. NUFRIEND was designed to cater to individual user needs and provides insights with respect to costs, emissions, and operational performance metrics for the evaluation of various decarbonization deployment strategies. Researchers at Northwestern and Argonne National Laboratory developed NUFRIEND through research funded by the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

Labor, Where are the Workers?

Neil Collins and Meredith Moot (both of Korn Ferry) delivered an assessment of the state of the labor force. The number one challenge they identified for company leadership moving into 2023 was the need for significant investment in the reskilling and reshuffling of employees and new hires. There was real and lasting employment disruption caused by the pandemic.

To What Extent is Sustainability Affecting Strategy and Operational Decisions

Klaus Weber, Thomas G. Ayers Chair in Energy Resource Management, Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management led a panel discussion on sustainability goals and decision making with Suresh Krishna (Northern Tool + Equipment), Christine Landmeier (United Airlines) and Doug Waggoner (Echo Global Logistics). The primary questions discussed were: 1) Is regulation or customer requirements driving change toward sustainable strategies and decision making?; 2) How are you choosing strategies for sustainable practices?; and 3) Are these data driven decisions?

Landmeier said that United’s strategy involves diversifying its approach to sustainable practices and has internal and external ESG targets to drive operational decision making and tracks the impact through life cycle analysis. United is lobbying to update FAA flying rules to GPS based system, which could provide more direct flight paths and have a significant impact on emissions reduction. Waggoner stated that Echo Global has started to publish an annual ESG report, with support from an outside consulting firm with expertise in ESG. More and more RFPs are asking about ESG initiatives, and ESG requirements are real – both upstream and downstream, although it’s somewhat a check the box requirement. He concluded, “it’s not immediately clear what the price elasticity of carbon emissions are yet.” Krishna wrapped up the session stating that unless ESG becomes ingrained in how one does business, like safety, (or is mandated by law), change will be slow, if at all.

Professor

Schofer would tell me to go tell a professor when I have good things to say about them, so I’m grateful to finally have the opportunity to share a few thoughts about someone - both professor and person - who has had an immense impact on me personally and professionally.

I spent the better part of 6 years at Northwestern, and there is no doubt in my mind that my experience and everything I have been to achieve since would not be the same without Prof. Schofer. When new students would ask me about class recommendations, Professor Schofer’s class was always without a doubt at the top of my list. Perhaps not only by virtue of the valuable topics he covers but how engagingly he covers them and for the professor he is. By pointing them in his direction, my hope was for other students to find the ally who would cheer them on and help them grow, just as I did when I met him a decade ago.

Professor Schofer’s favorite questions were the ones where I (often naively) challenged the status quo and questioned why certain topics were important for him to cover. No question was too small or unworthy of a thoughtful answer for Professor Schofer – even when it arguably was. In welcoming the questions and thinking through them with me, I would get invaluable lessons about the value of being intellectually humble and critical thinking. He taught me how anything could be questioned and how important it is for things to be reassessed continuously. To this day, I can draw a line from small successes at work to lessons such as these and others that he shared so effortlessly and generously.

Outside of the narrow confines of the classroom, Professor Schofer was, first and foremost, an ally to all students, always there to listen and bring their requests forward. For me personally, he made graduate school a little less daunting. The shortest of chats could help me overcome most hurdles that higher learning and life threw my way. To this day, I find so much joy in the news I hear about him or the messages I receive from him. I am sure that there are others that have known him far longer, and I am envious of it, but I feel lucky and so grateful for the honor to have crossed paths with Prof Schofer and for his friendship since.

- Lama Bou Mjahed PhD 2017

Dr.Joseph Schofer is truly a giant in the transportation world. I had the opportunity to have him as my professor and advisor when I was a graduate student at Northwestern University nearly 50 years ago. For hundreds of students who were fortunate enough to have him teach and advise them, he laid a foundation that launched many successful careers in transportation. A number of his students have become transportation leaders in government, industry, and academia.

In my case, he was instrumental in my eventually becoming a senior executive in both the Maryland Department of Transportation and the Transportation Research Board (TRB). He served as one of my most important mentors throughout the course of my career, and he has done the same for many other of his students. Although the topics of his research and publications have been far ranging, he has been particularly recognized for his research regarding decision making, decision support processes, and the use of data for effective decision making in transportation. His research is not only of the highest caliber, it has been quite impactful because it is so widely used in transportation practice. I have used what I learned from Dr. Schofer throughout the course of my career.

Dr. Schofer has been a leader in and a major contributor to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Transportation Research Board for over 50 years. He has served as a chair or member of dozens of National Academies and TRB committees, including standing technical committees, research panels, and consensus policy study committees. He has also served on many other advisory committees to all levels of government. I had the good fortune to serve on several committees together with Dr. Schofer over the course of my career, and I can attest to the fact that he is always insightful and knowledgeable; when he speaks everyone listens and respects what he has to say; and he always makes major contributions to the work product of the committee.

Joe, I offer my sincere congratulations on a distinguished career at Northwestern University and my thanks to you for all that you have done for me personally and for the transportation profession at large. I extend my best wishes for a happy, healthy retirement.

- Neil Pederson

Past Executive Director, Transportation Research Board

Ifirstmet Joe Schofer in April or May 1973 when I was visiting both Northwestern and MIT as choices for graduate school. I was accepted to both schools, thanks in large-measure to recommendations from my transportation professors at my undergraduate school (the University of Maryland), who had recently earned their PhDs from Northwestern. They were the late Everett Carter and Lonnie Haefner (who I subsequently sponsored as a candidate for an NAA Alumni Merit Award). Selection between the two schools came down to my level of comfort from my personal visits.

Joe’s cordial and welcoming demeanor during was all it took for me to choose Northwestern. Call it Midwestern wholesomeness or just a friendly demeanor; I was sold.

My first course from Joe was his D79 Urban Transportation Planning course. On the very first day of the class, he assigned all my classmates (many of whom are now professional colleagues) a term paper on a hot transportation issue from our hometown. I chose to write about the planning for rail service to Dulles International Airport. I still have the paper with Joe’s red mark-up and grading. I scored five out five on Form and four out of five on Style, Relation to Course, Support of Recommendations, and Analysis … 61 out of 75 possible points. He said, “Nice Job,” in his words -- an encouraging start to my Northwestern experience. I recently had the satisfaction of riding the Dulles extension on opening day -- nearly 50 years after that term paper was written!

Joe was my advisor on both my master’s thesis and Doctoral dissertation. Both were Federally funded research projects emerging from the USDOT’s response to the energy crisis in 1973-1974. The doctoral project was the smallest research grant in the year awarded by the Federal Highway Administration. The analytical work was conducted on computer facilities at Argonne National Laboratory; this was arranged by classmate Marty Bernard. My understanding was that we were using the computer applied for high-energy physics research, one of the largest, fastest computers in the world at the time. This was all batch-processed jobs that we could submit locally (on a Teletype machine in Joe’s office), but the printouts could only be retrieved at the computer center at Argonne. We took advantage of cheap computer costs for jobs submitted overnight. This awkward arrangement worked because there was a woman living in Evanston who carpooled to Argonne every day.

Our daily routine was that Joe, and I would meet in the afternoon to review the prior results and plan the next set of scenarios. I would then submit scenarios using the Teletype in Joe’s office, typically after midnight. The scenarios would run overnight, and the Evanston woman would pick up the printouts and bring them home. In the early evening I would pick up the results (walking to her home from the Main Street El station). Joe and I would then discuss the results – two days after we planned the scenarios – in our routine daily meetings. Because of the two-day lag between scenario definition and scenario results, we had two parallel sets of scenarios running most of them focusing on differences between a symmetrical hypothetical city and a one-sided hypothetical city (like the Chicago region against Lake Michigan). This process took a good part of the summer of 1976 to accomplish.

I imagine we could do it now in a single afternoon on a laptop computer.

Over the years, I have supported Joe and McCormick in many ways. This included delivering ten presentations (lectures, seminars, symposia) to Northwestern students on recently transportation planning projects, participating in the McCormick Advisory Council (early on, this included reviews of the Co-op program and McCormick Corporate Relations), and participating in the Northwestern Alumni Admission Council (which has sent many students to McCormick) Joe and his wife Nancy are good friends. They continue to host me on my occasional visits to Northwestern, and my wife Ellen and I have had the opportunity to return the favor.

My next trip to Northwestern will be in May 2023 for the Henry and Emma Rogers Society luncheon; I will come out a day early to lead a seminar on recent work on the financial plan for the NHDOT Capitol Corridor project. Most of what I will be talking about will have its roots in what I learned in Joe’s classroom.

- Bob Peskin Senior Consulting Manager, AECOM

EVENTS AND LECTURES

Patterson Transportation Lecture

The Annual William A Patterson Distinguished Transportation Lecture is named for William A “Pat” Patterson  In 1980, the NUTC established the Lecture as an integral part of the Patterson Endowment It has since become an annual highlight at Northwestern University, drawing influential speakers from all facets of the transportation industry

William A “Pat” Patterson was a central figure in the United States air transport industry for more than four decades He served as president and chairman of United Airlines from 1934 until his retirement in 1966 He was a life trustee of Northwestern University and was instrumental in the establishment and strategic leadership of the Transportation Center

39TH ANNUAL PATTERSON LECTURE

Ann Drake Stresses Pandemic

Lessons During Patterson Lecture

Ann Drake

President/Founder, Lincoln Road Enterprises

November 17, 2021 - For the past three decades, manufacturers have pushed to keep days of inventory as low as possible, relentlessly telling suppliers to provide materials when needed. At the same time, consumers had gotten used to getting what they wanted when they wanted it thanks to e-commerce, igniting a supply-chain arms race.

Even with the implicit challenges, that system was generally working until the COVID-19 pandemic.

“If I can borrow the urban legend about the boiling frog, we were sitting in the pot for some time, not noticing how hot the water was getting,” said Ann M. Drake (Kellogg ’84 MBA), president and founder of Lincoln Road Enterprises, a women’s leadership organization she started in 2019. “It took the pandemic to show us that the supply chain we tried to think of linearly, logically as a string of individual bits we could manage

and study was actually an ecosystem, a brittle well of interdependencies in a dynamic environment wherein if one element changes, the whole system torques.”

Introduced by Hani Mahmassani, director of the Northwestern University Transportation Center (NUTC) and the William A. Patterson Distinguished Chair in Transportation and professor of civil and environmental engineering and (by courtesy) industrial engineering and management sciences at Northwestern Engineering and Kellogg School of Management Dean Francesca Cornelli, Drake delivered the 39th William A. Patterson Transportation Lecture held November 17 at the Kellogg Global Hub.

Prior to starting Lincoln Road Enterprises, Drake was chairman and CEO of DSC Logistics (now CJ Logistics), helping to transform supply chain management into a critical and creative business strategy based on collaborative partnerships.

Sponsored by the NUTC, the address “Beyond Transportation Excellence: Lessons from the Pandemic” was especially well-timed. Material shortages have pushed the Consumer Price Index up 6.2 percent over the past year, and supply chains have been stretched especially thin recently.

The pandemic, Drake said, has handed business big lessons very fast, driving home how vulnerable the supply chain actually is. They are lessons that might have taken generations to learn, but instead, everybody is getting a crash-course.

Leadership and Air Travel Through the Pandemic and Beyond

Ed Bastian CEO, Delta Air Lines

May 4, 2022 - Perhaps no industry has been impacted more by the COVID-19 pandemic than air travel. In 2019, Delta Air Lines’ revenues and customer satisfaction were at record highs. Then, 30 days into March 2020, their revenue plummeted to less than 5 percent of previous year’s earnings.

But even as the COVID-19 pandemic spread, the airlines were kept in operation, and Delta avoided laying off any of its 75,000 workers. Two years later, demand for flights spiked to historic levels, businesses are back, and most of Delta’s workforce, was given a four percent pay raise in March. Delta CEO Edward Bastian discussed that path during the 40th Annual William A. Patterson Distinguished Transportation Lecture, presented by the Northwestern University Transportation Center (NUTC). Held Wedeneday, May 4, at the Walter Athletics Center Auditorium, Bastian spoke with Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications professor Danielle Robinson-Bell in the fireside chat “Leadership and Air Travel Through the Pandemic and Beyond.”

The event’s speakers were introduced by Hani Mahmassani, the director of the NUTC, William A. Patterson Distinguished Chair in Transportation, and professor of civil and environmental engineering.

In his talk, Bastian shared lessons from how one of the world’s biggest airlines weathered the industry’s greatest challenge since the Great Recession and how it’s gearing up to overcome another major obstacle.

FALL 2022 FEATURED SPEAKER

How Public Policy Affects Freight Capacity -Lessons Learned From the Public and Private Sectors

Roger Nober

Former EVP, Law & Corporate Affairs/ Chief Legal Officer, BNSF Railway

November 16, 2022 - Roger Nober, executive vice president and chief legal officer of BNSF Railway, delivered the NUTC Fall 2022 Distinguished Lecture, “How Public Policy Affects Freight Capacity – Lessons Learned from the Public and Private Sectors,” at the Kellogg Global Hub. Nober was appointed chairman of the Surface Transportation Board in 2002 by President George W. Bush and served until 2006. He shared four ways the public sector could help increase rail freight capacity.

The first one Nober mentioned was to fund infrastructure. That backing, Nober said, historically has an indirect impact on the supply chain because most [public infrastructure] money is geared toward passenger movement. People involved in freight infrastructure, he added, have long hoped for more public funding of principally freight projects.

There’s just one issue.

“It’s very difficult to do,” Nober said. “We really haven’t found a way to make the public funding process be able to respond to that.”

Rail freight must also compete with other sectors. Freight that moves on highways is transported by trucks, and more public funding of highways creates more inequity between trucking and rail.

Robert Martinez

Vice President for Freight and Economic Development, Moffatt & Nichol

June 2021 - Dr. Robert Martinez, NUTC Business Advisory Council (BAC) member and Vice President for Freight and Economic Development at Moffatt & Nichol, shared his outlook for the economy as NUTC’s featured evening speaker at the spring 2021 BAC meeting. In June 2021, his views included that the current economy was strong and that there were indications of a release of pent-up pandemic demand. He anticipated a spending boom, noting that household savings increased and retail sales were up 34 percent year-over-year. He was unclear whether this economic growth was sustainable in the short or long term. He also stated that the growth was policy driven -- rather than market driven.

Martinez was concerned by several economic factors, notably inflation that increased 5 percent year-over-year and climbing consumer prices. Complicating the economic situation at the time, according to Martinez, was the US dollar weakening labor force participation growing with rising wages.

Sharing his views on the transportation sector, Martinez reported that supply chains remained in shock in June 2021, labor shortages across many transportation sectors, carriers not providing quality services and a wider distribution of production locations – further changing and complicating supply chains. In summary, he opined that policy directives from the federal government to address inflation and other economic issues would be more a factor in the months and possibly years to come.

Industry Technical Workshops

Every year, Northwestern University Transportation Center (NUTC) and the Center for the Commercialization of Innovative Transportation Technology (CCITT) co-host two Industry Technical Workshops in conjunction with both Fall and Spring Business Advisory Council (BAC) meetings The Fall 2021, Spring 2021, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, and Fall 2022 Workshops are summarized in this report

https://transportation.northwestern.edu/news-events/industry-workshops/

Fall 2020 Workshop Advancing Freight Automation

November 17, 2020

“Advancing Freight Automation,” was NUTC’s first virtual Industry Technical Workshop Fall 2020. Industry experts showcased the evolving technology of autonomous transportation in the freight industries.

Dr. Imad Al-Qadi is a Bliss Professor of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Al-Qadi described the challenges in autonomous truck platoons and how they can be solved by regulating the speed and distance between trucks and also positioning them laterally to reduce damage to the road. Paul E. Denton, Senior Vice President at Progress Rail, a Caterpillar Company, described the different levels of automation. Between full and no automation, train engineers have options to automate acceleration and deceleration, as well as safety operations. The Head of Product at Ike, Chelsey Tanaka, discussed the validity and commercialization of automated trucks. Before the trucks can be deployed, they must be tested on the software end of development, testing the trucks in all kinds of simulations. Only then can they be released on the road, and when they are successful, the commercialization can start.

Featured Speakers

Imad Al-Qadi

Bliss Professor of Engineering; Director, Illinois Center for Transportation; Director, Smart Transportation Infrastructure Initiative, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign

Paul E. Denton

Senior Vice President, Progress Rail, a Caterpillar Company

Peter James VP of Product, Outrider

David Kassen

Vice President, SameDay Transportation, FedEx

Chelsey Tanaka Head of Product, Ike

Spring 2021 Workshop Transportation Electrification at Scale

June 16, 2021

Consumer readiness for electric vehicles was discussed for the Industry Technical Workshop of Summer 2021.

Satish Chandra, Director of Strategy and Growth Office at Cummins, described Cummins’ goals for a cleaner planet due to electric transportation. Cummins wants near zero local environmental impact and to have nothing wasted but, to have materials and water reused by 2050. Matt Stover, Director Business Development/ EV Services at Ford Motor Company, explained Ford’s commitment to electric vehicles with the creation of stronger batteries and the ability to let your vehicle power your home if there is a power outage. Alexander Voets, eMobility’s Product Marketing Manager, discussed the features of Freightliner’s eTrucks and how new infrastructure for electric vehicles, such as more charging stations, would need to be built in tandem to vehicle rollout to insure success.

Featured Speakers

Brendan Keegan

CEO, Merchants Fleet

Brad Beauchamp

Client Solutions Director, BrightDrop

Satish Chandra

Director, Corporate Strategy, Growth Office, Cummins

Idine Ghoreishian

Sales Director, Auto OEM Integration, Greenlots

Walter Graber Manager, Level 2 Charging Program, Tesla

Matthew Stover

Team Edison, Director Business Development/EV Services, Ford Motor Company

Alexander Voets

Sales and Marketing Manager – eMobility, Daimler Trucks North America

Andrew Wishnia

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate Policy, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy, U.S. Department of Transportation

Fall 2021 Workshop

Advancing Urban Air Mobility

November 17, 2021

Commuting by flight has the potential to become more local, as was discussed for Fall 2021’s Industry Technical Workshop, “Advancing Urban Air Mobility.” Industry leaders in electrical vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles have come together to explore a renovation in air travel.

For those who commute to work, anything that can reduce the time would be welcome. Eric Allison, Head of Product at Joby Aviation, would travel an hour and a half from his home to work. With his company’s eVTOL vehicles that have a 200 mile per hour cruise speed, he wants to cut down commute time and save one billion people one hour per day. Archer’s Director of Business Development, Andrew Cummins, has a similar approach. His company is partnering with United to make the trip to an airport much faster. Saving time is not the only benefit. Charles Clauser, Senior Director of Architecture at PS&S, highlighted how eVTOLs cut down on pollution due to them being electric and noise due to the engineering of the propellers. Along with these points, Yolanka Wulff, the Executive Director and Co-Founder of The Community Air Mobility Initiative (CAMI), balances the other positives and negatives to give eVTOLS a bigger-market pull in the hopes of wider adoption.

Featured Speakers

Eric Allison

Head of Product, Joby Aviation

Charles Clauser

AIA, Senior Director of Architecture, PS&S

Andrew Cummins

Director of Business Development, Archer

Edward Espiritu

Senior Manager, United Airlines Venture and Corporate Development, United Airlines

Yolanka Wulff

J.D, Executive Director & Co-Founder, The Community Air Mobility Initiative (CAMI)

Spring 2022 Workshop

Rethinking Revenue Management PostPandemic in the Travel and Transportation Industries

May 4, 2022

The Walter Athletics Center Auditorium at Northwestern was the site of discourse between academic experts and industry leaders for the Spring 2022 Industry Technical Workshop: “Rethinking Revenue Management Post-Pandemic in the Travel and Transportation Industry.”

Our featured speakers focused on how the pandemic led to the remodeling of demand prediction and what this meant for consumer relationships. Dr. Laurie Garrow, Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and President of AGIFORS, presented the sharp fall of airline passengers during COVID and how that was met by a fervent increase in demand. Her goal was to predict future scenarios so companies can plan different recovery scenarios and react accordingly. Eric Ruhlin, Managing Director of Revenue Decision Support at United Airlines, explained how he wants information gathered from the pandemic to improve prior data by focusing on high-level market data and the types of passengers flying United. The Vice President and Head of Research at Sabre Corporation, Sergey Shebalov, examined how personalized offers for different types of passengers can lead to optimal pricing. DiANNe is a machine learning algorithm, and Zeke Ziliak discussed how it can use historic data to adapt to patterns of demand in the industry, to give out price estimations. On the hospitality side of the industry, Micael Klein, Vice President of Global Revenue Management at Hyatt Corporation, explained how the pandemic brought updates to hotels such as contactless check-in and innovations such as day-use hotels for those that worked from home and needed an office like environment.

Frank Bush, a senior partner to BAC member Teradata, guided the discussion panel. The panelists discussed the importance of data science and how historical data in the digital cloud can help forecast seasonality, when consumers are demanding and buying products. Transactions from customers and how that can build relationships with companies was also considered. Asked whether companies should offer something to a customer who buys a certain product at a certain time of the year for multiple years, our panelists mentioned how personalization can be used to set up personalized prices and loyalty tiers. On the concept of personalization, Sergey Shebalov announced a project where a con-

sumer can right click on an advertisement of a destination and select an option to get them to that location by giving personalized deals.

Featured Speakers

Laurie Garrow

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Michael Klein

Vice President Global Revenue Management, Hyatt Corporation

Eric Ruhlin

Managing Director of Revenue Decision Support, United Airlines

Sergey Shebalov, Vice President and Head of Research Sabre Corporation

Zeke Ziliak

Transportation & Logistics Digitization Evangelist

Fall 2022 Workshop

Visibility Through the Supply Chain: Technologies and Best Practices

November 16, 2022

The past two years have been highly disruptive for the supply chain, underscoring the importance of data and information. Supply chain visibility — the ability of products in transit to be tracked from manufacturer to final delivery — is a crucial application of data.

“The heroes of this era and the emerging leaders have been those companies that are, in fact, providing capability to see across the supply chain across the transportation system, and those companies that are beginning to adopt these technologies in their every-day operations,” Mahmassani said.

Supply chain visibility was addressed during the technical workshop with four presentations from industry leaders, followed by a panel discussion. And though the discipline is crucial, it’s relatively young and has more room to grow.

Jonathan Shaver(far left) speaks during the panel discussion. He was joined by Danesha Marasinghe, Fabrizio Brasca, Bob Chappuis, Bart De Muynck, Omar Singh, and moderator Peeter Kivestu.

“This space that we operate in – the real-time visibility space – it’s only about six or seven years old,” said Fabrizio Brasca, Executive Vice President of Industry and Market Strategy for FourKites, a company that connects global end-to-end supply chains with powerful technology to digitize their supply chains for greater agility, efficiency, and sustainability, during his presentation. “The amount of acceleration, of advancement in technological capability, is rapidly increasing. This notion of an autonomous supply chain, I say it’s a nirvana, quite literally with the way technology is evolving and the fact we can do a lot of these things in our consumer worlds. It may not be that far.”

Featured Speakers + Discussants

Fabrizio (Fab) Brasca

Executive Vice President of Industry and Market Strategy, FourKites

Bob Chappius

General Manager, Uber Freight

Bart de Muynck EVP & Chief Industry Officer Management, project44

Peeter Kivestu, Principal, Oplytix, LLC - the Moderator

Danesha Marasinghe Industry Consultant – Supply Chain, Teradata

Jonathan Shaver Founder and CEO, StrategIQ Commerce

Omar Singh President & Founder, Surge Transportation

TC Seminar Series

NUTC’s Seminar Series provides students, faculty and the community access to real-world experiences, as told by seasoned industry professionals and researchers in their respective fields The seminars are designed to enhance the classroom experience, and each year NUTC features a wide variety of academic speakers, transportation professionals and researchers

Optimizing the Middle-Mile - Mike Hewitt, Loyola University Chicago

10/31/2019

Recent Developments and Current Issues Facing the National Rail Network: Thoughts on 10 Months at the Surface Transportation Board - Martin Oberman, Surface Transportation Board

Redefining Transportation with AI - Tiger Qie, DiDi

Gentrification and Displacement Near Los Angeles Rail Transit Stations: New Evidence from Micro-Data - Marlon G. Boarnet, University of Southern California

Harnessing Game Theory & Big Data for Autonomous and Connected Transportation Ecosystem - Xuan (Sharon) Di - Columbia University

03/18/2021

11/10/2022

Low-rank modeling for spatiotemporal mobility and traffic data - Lijun Sun, McGill University

Algorithmic Foundations for Demand Responsive Transit Systems - Samitha Samaranayake, Cornell University

Shared & on-demand mobility services: from matching to management - Kenan Zhang, Northwestern University

From Transportation Equity to Transportation Justice: Within, Through, and Beyond the State - Alex Karner, UT Austin

Perspectives on Travel During and After COVID-19 - Dr. Steven Polzin

Blue Skies for Amazon Air: An Assessment of the Expanding Capabilities of Amazon’s Cargo Airline - Joseph P. Schwieterman, Ph.D, DePaul University

Evacuation Network Modeling for Alternative Fuel Vehicles and Refueling Infrastructure Deployment - Eleftheria (Ria) Kontou, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Peaking inside the black box: Toward explainable - Al- empowered travel demand modelsXilei Zhao, Ph.D. - University of Florida

Incentive design for promoting ridesharing- Neda Masoud, University of Michigan

Economics and regulations of smart transportation systems - Daniel A. Vignon, University of Michigan

Do equations have politics? Time, design and pricing in transport economics - Sergio JaraDiaz - Universidad de Chile

Can light tolls do the heavy lifting ? - Lewis James Lehe - Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Scalable Algorithms for Bicriterion Trip-Based Transit Routing - Tarun Rambha, Indian Institute of Science (IISc)Bengaluru

Connecting the Dots: Data, Methods, and Policies - Cinzia Cirillo , University of Maryland

Contemporary Issues in Transportation Data Analytics - Dr. Fred Mannering, University of South Florida

Trade-off Between Safety, Mobility and Stability in Automated Vehicle Following Control: Theories and Field Experiments - Dr. Xiaopeng (Shaw) Li, University of Wisconsin-Madison(UW-Madison)

transportation.northwestern.edu/news-events/seminar-series

Sandhouse Rail Group

The Hagestad Sandhouse Rail Group began in 2002 to connect active and veteran rail practitioners with students and academics interested in rail-related issues Named for Douglas Dean Hagestad, a primary group founder who passed away in 2007, the Sandhouse Group meetings typically feature presentations from field experts, followed by an open forum discussion Sandhouse meetings are held during the week and begin around 3:00 p m , lasting roughly 90 to 120 minutes

10/31/2019

12/08/2019

01/19/2021

02/23/2021

03/23/2021

04/13/2021

Recent Developments and Current Issues Facing the National Rail Network: Thoughts on 10 Months at the Surface Transportation Board - Martin Oberman - Surface Transportation Board

Sandhouse / TRF Annual Luncheon Meeting - Anthony B. Hatch - ABH Consulting

Metra’s Strategic Plan for 2020 and beyond and Metra’s partnership with CREATE, Cook County and the State of Illinois on the 75th Street CIP - Jim Derwinski, Bruce Marcheschi & Norm Carlson - Metra

Federal Transportation Infrastructure Policy: How the Sausage Was Made (and How Passenger Trains Can Get a Piece) - Fritz Plous Railways, Post-Pandemic: What Could the “New Normal” Look Like - William VantuonoRailway Age

Christmas in Chicago, Virtually: Railroads in The Age of Disruption - Anthony Hatch - ABH Consulting

My Metra: Metra’s Outreach in Response to the Pandemic - James Derwinski - Metra

Amtrak today: An opportunity for the industry to win or lose? Panel: Henry Posner III, Paul Vilter, Thomas Cornillie, Jim Mathews Moderator: Professor Joseph Schofer

Finding, Providing, and Executing Valuable Solutions: The Story of Short Line Rail - Stefan Loeb - Watco Companies, LLC

Pardon Our Dust - Mike Noland - The South Shore Line (NICTD)

The Important Role of Railroads in Logistics Services - Panel: Kimia Khatami, Pacific Harbor Line Railroad; Josh Perkes, Loup: A Union Pacific Logistics Company Moderator: Justin Zubrod

10/26/2021

12/21/2021

04/19/2022

12/13/2022

CTA’s RPM Project in 2021: Progress, Challenges and Milestones - Christopher Bushell, Senior Vice President, Chief RPM Officer, Chicago Transit Authority Graham Garfield, General Manager, RPM Operations & Communication Coordination, Chicago Transit Authority

Rails 2021: CP+KSU, CNI/TCI, the STB plus REAL-RR bidness - Anthony B. Hatch | Senior Transportation Analyst & Financial Consultant, ABH Consulting

Metra and Commuter Rail into the Future - James “Jim” Derwinski | CEO & Executive Director, METRA

Long-Range Transit Planning in Disruptive Times: A view from NY - Michael J. Shiffer, PhD.Senior Vice President of Regional Planning, Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)

Ukraine’s Railway War: If you can’t send ammunition, give them a ride - Henry Posner IIIChairman, Railroad Development Corporation (RDC)

A Very Sandhouse Christmas2022 - After Renaissance, Retreat – Now What? - Anthony B. Hatch - Senior Transportation Analyst & Financial Consultant, ABH Consulting

Current Events (Sandhouse): transportation.northwestern.edu/news-events/sandhouse-rail-group

Icarus, a Greek mythological aviator, failed to heed his father Daedalus’ sage advice about climbing too near the sun and died when his fledgling wings melted

Formed in 2006, NUTC’s Icarus Aviation Society promotes in-depth dialogue about airlines, aircraft manufacturing, aviation services, technology, government oversight, and significant elements of business aviation The group was created to provide a public forum for discussion and dissemination of all information, issues and research relating to aviation

United Airlines Aviate: Reinventing the Pilot Pipeline

Captian Curtis Brunjes Managing Director. Pilot Strategy

United Airlines

In April 2020, United Airlines pilot Captain Curtis Brunjes spoke at Icarus.

In his discussion, Brunjes discussed Airlines in the United States that were adjusting to dramatic changes in the pilot supply situation. Demographics that were causing a surge in retirements were occurring simultaneously with global airline industry growth, driving unprecedented pilot demand in an environment that, until recently, hasn’t made the pilot career a foremost consideration for young people. The free market saw a shift from traditional hiring and development of new paradigms.

Featured Seminars

Do Equations Have Politics? Time, Design and Pricing in Transport Economics

Sergio Jara-Diaz Professor Universidad de Chile

Professor Jara-Diaz provided a synthesis on his recent work on the role of trip distance on the optimal pricing of public transport services, the hidden hierarchies and substitutions behind the differences in the time assigned to work by gender, and the revealed preferences behind the reduced fare programs for students and elders.

Sergio Jara-Diaz is Professor of Transport Economics at Universidad de Chile. He received his Ph.D. (1981) with a thesis in the field of Transport Economics and a M.Sc. (1980) in Civil Engineering, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also M.Sc. (1977) in Urban Planning from U. Católica de Chile and Civil Engineer (1974) from U. de Chile. Dr. Jara-Diaz is a founding member of the Transport Division at U. de Chile. His research interests include user behaviour (travel time values, income effect), models of time use (values of leisure and work), industry structure on transport networks, strategic design of public transport, optimal pricing and social appraisal of transport projects. He is the author of Transport Economic Theory (Elsevier, 2007) and acted as Deputy Director of the Institute for Complex Engineering Systems (2007-2014) until he became the Provost of Universsidad l..de Chile (2014-2016).

How BNSF Railway Uses Advanced Analytics

Dr.

April Kuo

Director of Data Science, Advanced Analytics and Operations Research BNSF Railways

Dr. April Kuo disscussed how BNSF Railway applies data analytics and advanced analytics, including optimization, simulation, and machine learning at BNSF.

She joined BNSF in 2008 and obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland – College Park in Civil Engineering, specialized in Transportation Engineering and is a Director Data Science Intermodal Analytics. Kuo is responsible for machine learning, optimization initiatives and data mart in the Intermodal area. She also supported various initiatives, including train blocking, real-time train scheduling, crew scheduling, predictive maintenance, and more at BNSF.

Fourth Symposium on Infrastructure Asset Management (SIAM4)

Researchers representing institutions from nine countries and eight states in the U.S. met at the Northwestern University Transportation Center for the Fourth Symposium on Infrastructure Asset Management (SIAM4), chaired by Professor Pablo Durango-Cohen. Participants presented recent research in developing and analyzing tools to support investments in the facilities that comprise transportation systems, including roads, bridges, tunnels, and passenger and freight rail systems. The symposium took place on June 4th and 5th and included

a plenary address by Dr. Robert Peskin, Global Head of ESG Advisory Services of AECOM -- an infrastructure consulting firm. Peskin earned his Ph.D. in Civil & Environmental Engineering from Northwestern University. Professor Joseph Schofer and NUTC Ph.D. students Jing Yu and Adrian Hernandez, supervised by Durango-Cohen, also delivered papers on Considering Environmental Impact in Pavement Design: An Input-Output Model with Substitution and Framework to Support Infrastructure Upgrades for Decarbonization of U.S. Freight Rail.

Transportation Research Board

TRB Annual Meeting January 2020

The Transportation Research Board (TRB) 99th Annual Meeting was held January 12 - 16, 2020, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. The information-packed program attracted more than 15,000 transportation professionals from around-the-world— including dozens of talented academics from Northwestern.

Every Year, NUTC invites Northwestern alumni to join TRB attendees for a Welcome Reception & Alumni Reunion at the Marriott Marquis. During TRB, Ph.D. candidate Elisa Borowski presented a poster titled “Social Media Effects on Sustainable Mobility Opinion Diffusion: Implications for Behavior Change” (co-authored by Professor Hani Mahmassani and Professor Ying Chen) on Monday, January 13th, in the Washington, DC Convention Center, Hall A. The poster presentation was part of the Information and Communication Technologies, Smartphones, Activity Patterns, and Travel Choices poster session sponsored by ADB20, the Standing Committee on Effects of Information and Communication Technologies on Travel Choices.

Monday’s Lectern Session 1237 featured “Simulation Framework for Autonomous On-Demand Urban Air Mobility (UAM),” authored by Ph.D. candidate Haleh Ale Ahmad, Professor Hani Mahmassani and Northwestern University graduate Professor Michael Hyland of University of California, Irvine. Professor Mahmassani delivered the presentation and left the audience with some takeaways, including simulation is a valuable tool for evaluating UAM and optimization-based strategies for aircraft assignments are better than rule-based in terms of cost-savings. The framework enables evaluation of alternative future deployment scenarios and operational strategies for electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft (“flying taxis”). This framework was applied to the Chicago metropolitan region.

On Tuesday, January 14th, PhD candidate Jason Soria presented “Ridesourcing Behavior Profiles: Application of K-Prototype Analysis on Large-scale Data from Chicago, Illinois” in a lectern session titled “Big City, Turn on My Phone and Set ME Free: Exploring the Influences on and Influence of Ridesharing in Major Cities.” In his presentation, Soria identified how people are generally using ridehailing in the city using data on weather, transit, taxis, and TNCs.

PhD candidate Kenan Zhang presented in Tuesday, January 14th’s lectern session titled “Traffic Equilibrium and Dynamics,” under ADB30 Committee on Transportation Network Modeling. Zhang presented “To Pool or Not to Pool: Equilibrium, Pricing and Regulation,” a project she co-authored with Professor Marco Nie that focused on the equilibrium, pricing and regulation in a monopoly e-hail market with on-demand pooling services. Zhang and Nie modeled the trade-off between solo and pooling rides for both passengers on the platform, evaluated the performance of optimal pricing strategies, and investigated the impact of regulations.

PhD candidate Monika Filipovska presented “Traffic Flow Breakdown Prediction Using Machine Learning Approaches,” which she had authored with Professor Hani Mahmassani during Tuesday’s Lectern Session 145B.

On Wednesday, PhD candidate Moein Hosseini presented during Lectern Session 1717: “Novel Methods in Simulation.” Hosseini’s paper was part of the FHWA-sponsored project titled “Role of Calibration in Quantitative Alternatives Analysis.” He titled his TRB presentation “A Calibration Framework for Simulation Tools to Manage Uncertain Future Conditions.”

Transportation Research Board

TRB Annual Meeting January 2022

In 2021, the Annual Transportation Research Board Meeting was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. After restrictions were lifted in 2022, TRB officials announced a return to an in-person meeting at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC.

The 101st Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., hosted thousands who work or study in the transportation field gathered to engage in over 400 workshops, committee meetings, lectures, and poster sessions. Among Northwestern participants were: Hoseb Abkarian, who presented the research paper, “Modeling the Mixed-service Fleet Problem of Shared-use Autonomous Mobility Systems for On-Demand Ridesourcing and Carsharing with Reservations,” developed in collaboration with Dr. Hani Mahmassani and NUTC alumus Dr. Michael Hyland (University of California, Irvine); and Elisa Borowski and Dr. Amanda Stathopoulos, who presented two new studies, including “Changes in Social Support Networks Across Physical and Virtual Spaces During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” that compared the experiences of young adults across gender, racial, and sexual identities.

Beyond its world-class research and education, the Transportation Center is, first and foremost, about community—a community of students and faculty, researchers and dedicated staff, loyal alumni, industry partners and transportation professionals Each year, NUTC fosters this community by means of networking events, speaker forums, clubs, and social gatherings

NUTC Community

In Memoriam

NUTC and the Northwestern community would like to acknowledge and pay respects to several members who have recently passed and have made a significant contribution to our center

Dick Craig

Business Advisory Council Member

Jan Achenbach

Professor

Northwestern

University

Jan Achenbach passed away August 22, 2020 He was a professor at McCormick School of Civil and Environmental Engineering for over 50 years According to an article written by Brian Sandalow, Senior Communications Coordinator at McCormick, about his passing, Achenbach was “renowned for his pioneering work on quantitative nondestructive evaluation ” Throughout his career, he received many honors including the 2003 US National Medal of Technology, the 2005 US National Medal of Science and 2012 ASME Medal from the Society of Engineering Science

Northwestern University Transportation Center

All of his life, Dick was a true-blue rail fan seeking rail journeys and steam engine excursions all over North America This passion led him to obtain his first postgraduate position with the Southern Pacific Railroad in San Francisco He soon discovered that railroads are more fun to ride than work for, and after a few years, he made a career change to the international shipping industry by joining APL Ltd in 1980 After twenty-three years at APL, Dick accepted a position with Mitsui O S K Lines (MOL), then rising to CEO of MOLAM (North America), where he remained until his retirement At the time of his passing, Dick served as a member of the NUTC Business Advisory Council

Ed Czepiel

Former Employee

Northwestern University

Ed was a part of the Transportation Center family going back to when he entered Northwestern to pursue his MS in transportation engineering in 1991 After finishing his degree, he stayed at the NUTC as a research associate under Director Aaron Gellman and Professor Joseph Schofer Ed worked at the Center for 13 years, leaving as Associate Director of Research to join Flight Safety International in Wichita, KS He regularly returned to Northwestern for Transportation Center events and to see old friends and fellow alums

Leon Keer

Professor Northwestern University

Leon Keer was the professor of Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at McCormick School of Engineering He joined the Northwestern University in 1964 as an assistant professor of civil engineering During his tenure, he has published about 400 scholarly articles, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering win 1997, was an American Academy of Mechanics fellow, received the Mayo D Hersey award, and much more

John Ruan III

Chairman Emeritus Ruan Transportation

Chairman Emeritus John Ruan III of the Ruan family of companies, including Ruan Transportation Management Systems, passed away on September 11, 2021 at 78-years-old

Ruan attended Northwestern University for his undergraduate degree, was a lifetime fan of Northwestern athletics, and particularly enjoyed attending football games He and his father, John Ruan, Sr were longtime and generous supporters of the Northwestern University Transportation Center They sponsored the company’s membership on the NUTC Business Advisory Council (currently represented by his son-in-law and Ruan Transportation CEO Ben Mclean, Northwestern BS, MBA, J D ), supported NUTC’s building construction campaign in the late 1990s, and most recently established the Ruan Family Transportation Fund

He was dedicated to his country and local community He served as a Navy Seabee in the Vietnam War And for two decades, he served as both the Chairman of the Board of the U S Chamber of Commerce and the Chairman of the World Food Prize Foundation, among many other service and philanthropic contributions

Marty Wachs

Professor Northwestern University

Martin “Marty” Wachs passed away in 2021 He was a Ph D graduate and former professor at Northwestern University, University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley), and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) During his career, Wachs was a researcher at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit institute that helps improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis, and taught at the RAND Pardee Institute

Hayes Watkins

Former CEO CSX 1926-2022

Former CSX Chairman and CEO Hayes Watkins died at the age of 96 As a 42-year veteran of CSX , Watkins has held several positions, including board member of several companies and written a autobiogrphay CSX has been apart of NUTC’s Business Advisory Council for many years

Trivia Night, Tours, and TRB

The Northwestern Transportation Club (NTC) is a platform for all students interested in transportation at Northwestern It connects communities, generates interest, and creates space for transportation enthusiasts and careerseeking students to collaborate and celebrate their shared passion NTC’s goal is to provide an environment for members and students to stay-in-touch outside of the classroom through relaxing and fun social events, advancing the experience of students through boots-on-the-ground visits and events, and providing networking and job opportunities through industry events

NTC organizes seminars, workshops, field trips, and networking events Some highlights from 2020-2023 were: holding online social events and game nights in 2020 during the pandemic; hosting an online industry event with Amazon and DHL in 2021 in collaboration with Northwestern’s Informs Club; organizing field trips to Amazon and DHL in 2022; and several Ready for Research seminars

The Ready for Research seminars included:

“Taking R to the Next Level: Tips and Tricks to Streamline your Workflow”

Maher Said - 10/07/21

“Taking R to the Next Level: Tips and Tricks for Plotting with ggplot2”

Jason Soria - 10/28/21

“Introduction to Agent-Based Modeling with NetLogo with Applications to Transportation Systems”

Emma Zajdela - 02/10/22

“Accessing Crowdsourced, Social, and Shared Resources: Behavioral Research for Disruption Mobility and Equitable Policymaking”

Elisa Borowski - 10/27/22

“An Introduction to Tableau Dashboards: Data Exploration, Analysis, and Visualization”

Sharika Hegde - 10/17/22

“The Hidden World of Latent Variables: A Tutorial in Latent Factor and Latent Class Modeling in R” Divyakant Tahlyan - 10/12/23

In January 2020, while at the TRB Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., the NTC Transportation Club members shared lunch together.

In April 2022, NTC visited the DHL Innovation Center in Rosemont, IL.

NTC visited and toured the Amazon Fulfillment Center MKE2 in May 2022.

In May 2022, the NTC hosted a transportation trivia game night along with members from Northwestern University Transportation Library. Those in attendance were students, faculty and NUTC staff.

Welcome Reception

On October 6, 2022, NUTC held its annual welcome reception. The reception gives new students the opportunity to network with current students, faculty, staff, local alumni, and BAC members.

End-of-Year Event

At the end of each year, NUTC hosted a soiree to celebrate the end of the year’s accomplishments. The 2022 picnic was held June 30, 2022 at Northwestern University’s Walter Athletic Center. Those who attended were students, alumni, faculty, staff and local BAC members.

Annual Holiday Party

As the end of each year, NUTC gathers students, faculty, staff, BAC members, and alumni at its annual holiday party. The party is a time-honored tradition where attendees can enjoy each others company before Northwestern’s winter break.

Dissertation Defense

NUTC celebrated several successful doctoral dissertation defenses, including those of Moein Hosseini and Jason Soria.

Moein’s dissertation, “Autonomous Vehicle Managed Space Strategies: Characterization, Modeling, and Simulation,” was supervised by Professor Hani Mahmassani, with Drs. Marco Nie, Qi Zhu, and Ying Chen as committee members.

Jason’s dissertation, “Care to Share? Investigating Mobility-on-Demand and Other Shared Modes with Big Data and Surveys,” was supervised by Professor Amanda Stathopoulos, with Drs. Joseph Schofer and Eran Ben-Elia as committee members.

In 2022, Dr. Haleh Ale-Ahmad successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation titled “Development and Application of a Dynamic Solution Framework for Urban Air Taxi Fleet Operation,” completed under the supervision of Professor Dr. Hani Mahmassani. Professors Marco Nie, Karen Smilowitz, Michael Hyland(UC Irvine), and Michael Hewitt (LoyolaChicago) served on her dissertation committee.

In February 2021, Dr. Helen Pinto successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation, “Integrated Transit System Design with Autonomous Vehicle Fleet Services: Mathematical Formulation, Solution Approach and Large-Scale Application.” Her PhD committee consisted of Drs. Joseph Schofer, David Morton and Hani Mahmassani (chair). Dr. Pinto works as a Data Scientist at Bloomberg in New York City.

ASCE Awarded PhD Candidate

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Illinois Section has selected Northwestern PhD candidate Divyakant Tahlyan (advisor, Professor Hani Mahmassani) as 2021 recipient of ASCE’s Transportation & Development Institute (T&DI) Bob Camillone Memorial Scholarship. Scholarship recipients are selected on the basis of their academic performance, work experience, community involvement, and other extracurricular activities, written essay response and formal letters of recommendation. His wife Sindhusuta—PhD candidate at University of Illinois, Chicago—was also selected for a scholarship award.

Northwestern University Transportation Center (NUTC) relies heavily on the generosity of alumni, friends, and industry sponsors to achieve its goals and fund its broad range of academic and research activities. Gifts to NUTC are used primarily to support students pursuing degrees in transportation-related programs offered at Northwestern. This support includes scholarships, fellowships, sponsorship of students to attend academic and industry conferences, and support of a wide range of student activities including the Seminar Series, field trips, and other special events.

Your Support Matters Donate Today

Northwestern University Transportation Center Director & Staff

Hani S. Mahmassani

Director masmah@northwestern.edu

847.491.2282

Breton Johnson

Senior Associate Director bretj@northwestern.edu

847.491.2194

Andrea Cehaic

Assistant Director

andrea.cehaic@northwestern.edu

847.491.2280

Torene Harvin

Senior Program Coordinator torene.harvin1@northwestern.edu

847.491.7287

Marinko Kuljanin

Financial Assistant marinko.kuljanin@northwestern.edu

847.491.2275

Nancy

Associate Research Administrator nancy.nichols@northwestern.edu

847.491.2276

Organizational Structure

Northwestern University Administrative Officers University Administrators

Michael

Christopher Schuh Dean, McCormick School of Engineering & Applied Science

Report Production

Editors

Writers

Rachel

Torene

Nancy

Managing

Photography Torene

Shutterstock

Brian