2015 Overview

Overview of Activities at rCITI – 2015

The centre continued to thrive in 2015 under Prof Waller’s leadership.  With the highlights been:-

  • Award of two Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery projects;
  • Award of one Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage project;
  • Award of one Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) project;
  • Establishment of TRACSLab@UNSW;
  • Award of Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence for 2015 for “Approaches to teaching that influence, motivate and inspire students to learn, in CVEN4701 Planning Sustainable Infrastructure 2013 – 2015”;
  • Renewal of the Advisian Professor of Transport Innovation Chair

The collegiate and supportive relationship between students and researchers has helped make the transportation program at rCITI an effective community.  Which in turn has fostered many joint collaborations for research as well, as providing opportunities for professional and personal development.  UNSW’s faculty/schools/centres such as Art & Design, Aviation, Built Environment, Business, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Computer Science Engineering, Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications, iCinema, Mathematics, Medicine, Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering, Mining Engineering and Psychology have been involved in collaborative research with rCITI.  Partnerships with local and international university have been developed, these include: The University of Sydney, Monash – Melbourne, University of Texas at Austin, Georgia State University, DELFT University of Technology – Netherlands, University of Leeds – UK. The impact of these research endeavours and others are been realised as the researchers present their findings at international and national conferences, in addition to publishing in quality publications.

Thanks to the passion and various interests of our researchers and students, rCITI has been able to sustain its ongoing growth and progress in dealing with multidisciplinary transport issues.  By teaming with world leading researcher across multiple interdisciplinary boundaries rCITI is able to conduct leading research in travel choice, econometrics, experimental economics, visualization and transport network analysis.

TRACSLab@UNSW

Dr Vinayak Dixit and Dr Zhitao Xiong were involved in the establishment of the TRACSLab@UNSW in January 2015.  The TRACSLab (Driving Choice Simulation Laboratory) is an unique world first facility built to assist the rCITI team in its comprehensive analysis of travel choice. This will be done by re-designing the fundamental choice assumptions so to support the emerging transport issues of sustainability, reliability and Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) in our communities.  The networked driving and bicycle simulators will be used for traffic modelling and collective interactions.  

Transport themed art installation at UNSW Climate - Change Forum 

Researchers Charlotte Wang and Dr Melissa Duell from rCITI, CVEN and Alex Byrne from UNSW Art & Design contributed to the UNSW Climate Change Festival (Thursday 29 October 2015) with a transport-themed sculptural exhibit. This was a multi-disciplinary project bringing together the disciplines of engineering, art and design in a sculptural installation.  This exhibit is the first project arising from a joint venture to facilitate an exchange of ideas between traditionally disparate bodies of knowledge, to raise awareness, and to develop and implement practical, locally applicable solutions for a sustainable Sydney

37th Australasian Transport Research Forum (ATRF 2015)

rCITI and Transport for NSW's Bureau of Transport Statistics organised and hosted the the 37th Australasian Transport Research Forum (ATRF 2015) conference at the UNSW CBD Campus 30 September – 2 October 2015.  ATRF is the main forum for transport planning, policy and research for both the public and private sectors in Australasia. This event brought together over 200 of the region’s leading transport professionals from academia, government and the private sector to hear and see 91 presentations and 55 posters in the latest research and initiatives.

Recognition

A number of our staff were recognised for their outstanding work:-

  • Dr Lauren Gardner and Dr Taha Hossein Rashidi were acknowledged by the Faculty and School for their contribution to research, teaching and service, with their promotion to Senior Lecturer;
  • Dr Taha Hossein Rashidi, together with Dr Stephen Moore, A/Prof Richard Stuetz, Ruth Fisher, Prof Martin Nakata, A/Prof Iain MacGill and Elsie Edgerton-Till  were awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence for 2015 for “Approaches to teaching that influence, motivate and inspire students to learn, in CVEN4701 Planning Sustainable Infrastructure 2013 – 2015”;
  •  Prof S. Travis Waller Advisian Chair for Transport Innovation was announced. Advisian (formerly Evans & Peck) were pleased with the progress of Professor Travis Waller and his team at the Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation (rCITI) and as such confirmed their continuing support through the signing of the Advisian Professor for Transport Innovation Chair into the future.

 rCITI would like to recognise, thank and wish the following people all the best in their new endeavours:-

  • Lavy Libman (CSE) for his association and collaboration to the rCITI team in the wireless communications for intelligent transportation systems (ITS) research space. (2011-2015)
  • Rob Fitzpatrick (NICTA) for his commitment in providing guidance and direction to rCITI, as a member of its steering committee (2011-2015).

Staff

The core rCITI staffing grew to 19 professionals. This was comprised of 5 continuing academics, 6 contract/adjunct/conjoint academics, 7 researchers and one centre administrator. We were very pleased to welcome the following new staff to the rCITI team in 2015:-

  • Dr Melissa Duell (Research Associate), her research interests are in network systems models that quantify previously intangible policy implications, particularly in the area of sustainability.
  • Dr Andras Bota (Research Associate), his research interest are in applications of graph theory and network science on real-life problems.

The rCITI group published 51 research papers in journals and proceedings in 2015.  Throughout 2015, the core academic staff supervised and supported 27 PhD students, 4 Masters by Research, 4 Research by Coursework and 20 Honours students. In addition, rCITI hosted four visiting students including 1 Practicum Exchange Program student, 1 Research Internship student, and 2 visiting students.