Eight professors at the 91Ě˝»¨ have been elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences, the organization . The Academy said members are elected “in recognition of their outstanding record of scientific and technical achievement, and their willingness to work on behalf of the Academy to bring the best available science to bear on issues within the state of Washington.”Ěý

The 2023 cohort includes 29 new members. Twenty-six were elected by current WSAS members, and the other three were selected because they recently joined one of the National Academies.ĚýĚý

The 91Ě˝»¨faculty who will be formally inducted in September are:ĚýĚý

• , Kirby & Kelly Cramer Endowed Professor of Nursing, for “contributions to improving public health systems and services. Foundational to Senator Murray’s , her research supports collection of standardized public health financial data assessing impact.”Ěý
• , associate professor of microbiology and of genome sciences at the 91Ě˝»¨School of Medicine and professor and investigator at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, for “contributions to our understanding of viral evolution and how mutations shape a pathogen’s ability to infect and spread. His discoveries have driven the scientific and public discourse on numerous viruses, including influenza, HIV, and most recently SARS-CoV-2.”Ěý
• , Washington Research Foundation Innovation Professor in Clean Energy and professor of mechanical engineering, for “outstanding contributions to the fundamental understanding of battery electrode architectures and the development of advanced manufacturing methods to accelerate commercialization of materials processing technology.”Ěý
• , professor of sociology and of public policy and governance, director of the and associate vice provost for research, for “groundbreaking work in demography and the sociology of migration, taking a multi-faceted approach that illuminates the dynamic interplay between demographic conditions and factors such as gender, socio-economic context, and climate change.”Ěý
• , research professor of microbiology at the 91Ě˝»¨School of Medicine, professor at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and director of the Pathogen-Associated Malignancies Integrated Research Center, for “For contributions to advancing our understanding of the role that small DNA tumor viruses – human papillomaviruses (HPV) and human polyomavirus (HPyV) – play in cancer development.”
• , J. Ray Bowen Endowed Professor for Innovation in Engineering Education and professor of aeronautics and astronautics, for “extraordinary contributions to guidance and control of autonomous and distributed aerospace systems, for leadership in educational innovations, and for advancing aerospace technology transfers leading to industry research collaborations throughout his career.”Ěý
• , Michael G. Foster Endowed Professor of Information Systems and chair of the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management, for “outstanding contributions to advance our understanding of how technologies impact the behaviors and decision-making of individuals, organizations, and society in the contexts of e-commerce, social media, fintech, healthcare, and sharing economy.”Ěý
• , Thomas and Marilyn Nielsen Endowed Professor in Engineering, professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of PacTrans and STAR Lab, for “pioneering contributions to traffic sensing, transportation data science, edge AI, and smart infrastructure system theory and technologies, as well as the exceptional leadership in regional collaborations among academia, industry, and agencies for creating transformational mobility solutions.”Ěý

Correction: An earlier version of this release omitted the election of Denise Galloway to the Academy.

The competitive funding, which local and regional agencies and companies will match for an expected total of $28 million, advances the work of the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium, or . It’s one of 10 regional across the U.S. and represents Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska.

The new grant will expand PacTrans’ focus, which previously included data-driven solutions for transportation safety and sustainability, to address all aspects of the region’s diverse mobility challenges. That will include everything from alleviating traffic congestion to improving transit accessibility for people with disabilities, improving the reliability of trip-planning tools and expanding rural transportation options.

Other university partners include Boise State University, Gonzaga University, Oregon State University, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Idaho and Washington State University.

“This exciting new grant will allow us to address broader mobility challenges, of which our region certainly has many,” said PacTrans director , a 91Ě˝»¨professor of civil and environmental engineering.

“We’re seeing rapid population growth in both Portland and Seattle, but we also have the very rural areas like Alaska, with very few people living in a vast landscape. So the question is: How can we offer transportation mobility to people in very different living environments?” Wang said.

The federal program’s funding commitment is five years, much longer than the previous two UTC awards, providing valuable stability and opportunity. The universities may also partner with private companies and other stakeholders with economic and social interests in improving the reliability and efficiency with which people and goods move around the region. The proposal had strong support from members of the Congressional delegations across the involved states.

“Transportation mobility is one of the great challenges facing Washington state as we seek to remain competitive now and in the future,” said Sen. Patty Murray. “This funding will support important advances that will benefit our local communities and the nation as a whole.”

Potential research topics include expanding the use of wireless sensors to collect data and connect traffic systems, integrating self-driving vehicles into traffic operations, exploring transit deserts across the region, strategic freight planning and car-sharing for elderly communities.

“When it comes to transportation problems, I have found that most folks want facts and data to guide decision-making,” said Rep. Rick Larsen, a senior member of the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. “That is why this grant is important – it will help the 91Ě˝»¨and its PacTrans partners develop smarter transportation solutions that will help drive job growth and keep the economy moving.”

Matching funders include transportation industry partners and local transportation agencies, including the four states’ transportation departments and the City of Seattle.

“Considering the transportation challenges facing America, our country needs this innovative research being done by these universities to help speed up freight movement and reduce congestion,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell.

For more information, contact Wang at yinhai@uw.edu.

On any given bus ride, a good share of passengers are reading, texting or rocking out to music on their phones or tablets. In the future, those mobile devices may add more value to our transit commutes than simply filling time.

91Ě˝»¨ researchers have developed an inexpensive system that uses Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals from passengers’ mobile phones and devices to collect better data about where bus riders get on and off, how many people use a given stop and even how long they wait to transfer to another bus.

The system — described in a paper that was presented at the in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 11 — could help transit agencies collect valuable real-time data to provide better service.

To improve efficiency and ensure that buses are meeting the greatest needs in a community, transit agencies today typically rely on passenger surveys, head counts and smart card swipes that may only offer partial information about how people are using the transit network.

The 91Ě˝»¨transportation engineers developed sensors— which cost about $60 per bus — that can detect a unique identifier called a associated with a particular mobile device as it boards and leaves the bus to offer complete and real-time travel data. The system only collects MAC addresses and the time and location they are detected from Bluetooth or WIFI signals, and each address is anonymized for privacy protection.

The technology has been used to estimate vehicle travel times on highways and roads, but this is among the earliest attempts to investigate its possible use for collecting passenger origin and destination data on a transit system, researchers said.

“Let’s say you have a Husky game or Seahawks game and you want to know how much demand changes so you can offer the right level of bus service for this special event,” said senior author , a 91Ě˝»¨professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the , or PacTrans.

“If you can gather enough data from these real-time sensing systems, that’s going to offer very valuable information,” he said.

The research team tested the system in May 2015 by installing sensors on the South Lake Union Shuttle and Health Sciences Express buses operated by 91Ě˝»¨Transportation Services, which run from the university’s main campus to South Lake Union and Harborview Medical Center.

Because the system only senses addresses from mobile devices that have Wi-Fi enabled or whose Bluetooth is in discoverable mode — which wouldn’t be the case for everyone riding a bus — the transportation engineers wanted to know whether they could collect enough data to yield an accurate picture of travel behavior.

Another challenge was developing processing algorithms to filter out all the signals from mobile devices running Wi-Fi or Bluetooth carried by people who were near the bus but not actually riding on it.

“That’s probably the hardest part of the whole thing,” said co-author , a 91Ě˝»¨civil and environmental engineering doctoral student and research assistant who manages the UW’s .

“The big things we’re concerned with are pedestrians and cyclists or people in cars or buildings that have their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices on and are close enough to have the sensors on the bus pick up those signals,” he said. “So we have to make sure we filter out those addresses.”

For instance, the sensors mounted inside the buses initially picked up more than 20,000 unique addresses from mobile devices, the time of detection and GPS locations during the test period. After weeding out signals that were unreasonably long or short, or that appeared or vanished far from a bus stop, the researchers wound up with 2,800 “trips” that they are confident were taken by passengers on the bus.

The origin and destination data from the remote sensing system matched information that the researchers collected by riding buses and tracking how many people got on and off at various stops.

Transit agencies are perennially seeking that type of information to inform decisions about changing routes or service levels, or to determine how frequently buses should run, whether they need larger buses at certain times of day, and how to meet demand and operate the transit system most effectively.

“We were able to prove the concept and demonstrate that it’s much cheaper to collect data this way,” Wang said. “This is really just at the beginning stage, but this technology is going to become more universal in the age of smart cities.”

One open question is whether data collection that relies on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals could leave out certain segments of the population — such as the elderly or low-income who may not carry mobile devices or use wireless networks. That’s why 91Ě˝»¨researchers are also interested in investigating how people use different technologies during their commutes.

Given the penetration of cell phone ownership, though, Henrickson said the technology’s potential to improve equity in the transit system arguably outweighs possible drawbacks.

“Think about understanding how long and disconnected a route may be from some less-privileged neighborhoods to an employment center. This technology provides a much better way of assessing that and possibly improving upon that,” Henrickson said.

Funding for the research came from PacTrans and Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT).

Co-authors include 91Ě˝»¨Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering doctoral student and research associate

For more information, contact Wang at yinhai@uw.edu and Henrickson at henr2237@uw.edu.

The 91Ě˝»¨ is one of four institutions receiving four all-electric micro vehicles this summer. The cars, called “new urban electric vehicles,” will connect to the UW’s wireless network and will be equipped with tablet-sized personal computers. They will be able to communicate data such as position, speed and battery charge directly to the UW’s network, which will provide the information to various research projects.

“It’s a fantastic research platform,” said project co-leader , an associate professor of electrical engineering and a principal research scientist with the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

“Among the biggest impacts here will be an opportunity for faculty and students from different departments to work with each other. We will have a mobile, fully connected and instrumented system with electrical, mechanical and chemical components, and applications in many engineering domains.”

The UW’s project leaders also include , a professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the , and , a professor of electrical engineering. They will choose projects from proposals submitted by faculty in engineering, information technology, and environmental and forest sciences. Broadly, the projects will cover topics in sensing, energy, communications and transportation.

Potential projects range from using the cars to test automated parking technologies, developing a program similar to the UW’s NightRide service, strategizing the best way to charge electric cars and even detecting and recording bird songs on campus. The research and project designs will involve undergraduate and graduate students.

“A lot of people at the 91Ě˝»¨are interested in electric vehicles from different perspectives,” said Kirschen, who is hoping to study and identify patterns of everyday use of these electric cars on campus. “The university has a good track record in sustainability and getting students involved in this type of research.”

Colorado State University, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Wisconsin-Madison were also chosen to receive electric cars. The four schools were selected by the non-profit organization Internet2 and Innova UEV from a pool of 11 proposals. The UW’s project is also supported by 91Ě˝»¨Information Technology, which will provide wireless and cellular connectivity, as well as cloud computing resources for the various experiments.

Depending on the nature of the projects, a student or faculty or staff member might get to take a ride in one of these electric cars. Just remember to hold onto your hat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B8jYg0TeI8