Category: News

The selection committee of the ISWIM Young Researcher Award announced that Navoda Rillagodage was selected for the 2024 award. ISWIM fully sponsored the travel and registration expenses for Navoda, who presented her work at the WIM Subcommittee meeting during the Transport Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting January 5-9, 2025, in Washington DC, USA.

The work she has done since her internship and research assistantship experience days shows her depth of understanding and interest in WIM. Dr. Rillagodage’s work has implementable results that law enforcement and engineers can use to understand the behavior of drivers and to design better pavements. Her current role as the manager for the Manitoba Highway Traffic Information System shows her desire and commitment to the WIM field.

Dr. Regehr was recognized by the Transportation Research Board Standing Committee Blue Ribbon Award (awarded to the Highway Traffic Monitoring Committee, recognizing efforts initiated by Jonathan Regehr during his term as Chair, for the committee’s sustained effort to enhance committee diversity by attracting, promoting, and rewarding young professionals and people from under-represented groups and providing them with support and leadership roles).

Homa Motavallian Naeini was elected Councillor of the leadership team of the Civil Engineering Graduate Students’ Association (CEGSA) 2024-2025 at the University of Manitoba! The team is dedicated to fostering a strong community, supporting research collaboration, and driving the professional growth of graduate students.

In November, Dr. Regehr travelled to South Africa where he engaged with researchers at two universities: (1) University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) and (2) Stellenbosch University (near Cape Town). During his visits he interacted directly with several professors at both universities, gave two truck-related research seminars, and met with post-doctoral and graduate students working in sustainable road freight transportation, logistics, and traffic engineering. These universities are both affiliated with the Centre for Sustainable Road Freight in South Africa.

On November 15, 2024, Dr. Mehran was hosted at the University of Calgary where he gave a seminar on “Navigating Transportation Challenges in the Canadian Prairies and Northern Regions: Insights from Research”.  During his visit he meet with Dr. Chan Wirasinghe, and Dr. Merkebe Demissie, Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering.

Dr. Regehr travelled to Québec City from October 7 to 11 to connect with Dr. Julien Lépine, Université Laval, who is the Chair for the upcoming HVTT Symposium. Dr. Regehr provided a research seminar for the Interuniversity Research Centre on Enterprise Networks, Logistics, and Transportation (CIRRELT), which showcased UMTIG’s truck-related research portfolio, including our ongoing research on zero-emission trucks.

On September 5 and 6, Dr. Jonathan Regehr and PDFs Drs. Jyoti Mandhani and Phani Patnala attended the Northern Transportation Symposium in Thompson, Manitoba, along with Dr. Carl Ho from Electrical and Computer Engineering. In addition to the Symposium, they toured Area 55 Advanced Cold Research Facility and the Thompson airport, visited University College of the North, took a boat trip see a hydro-electric facility, and met with numerous people from local and Indigenous communities. Among other themes, they learned about freight transport challenges in northern and Indigenous communities and the interests of those communities to participate in transformative technologies like electric trucks.

On August 9, 2024, Maryam Ghaffari Dolama successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis entitled “Quantifying Mobility Impacts of Railway Grade Crossing Blockages on Vehicular Traffic and Emergency Responders”. A special thanks to Dr. Orly Linovski and Dr. Babak Mehran for serving on the Examining Committee along with external examiner Dr. Eric Hildebrand, Department of Civil Engineering at the University of New Brunswick.

Dr. Mehran attended the Automated Road Transportation Symposium in San Diego, California from July 29 to August 1, 2024, representing UMTIG and the University of Manitoba.

Tara Saeidi attended and presented her paper “Estimating Transit Passenger Alighting Counts by Optimizing Symmetry through a Double DQN Clustering Framework” at Transit Data 2024: The 9th International Workshop and Symposium on Research and Applications on the Use of Passive Data from Public Transport, which took place from July 1-4, 2024 in London, UK, at UCL and Transport for London!

Homa Motavallian Naeini, Ph.D. Candidate was part of the organizing committee for the 2024 CARSP Conference which took place June 16-19, 2024, in Ottawa, Canada.  The theme of this year’s conference was “Safe Mobility: Achieving Vision Zero in Urban and Rural Environments”