National Institute for Transportation and Communities

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Approximately 7,700 years ago—in a cataclysmic event which the Klamath people retold and passed down for over 300 generations—Mount Mazama erupted, forming Crater Lake in Oregon. With molten rock reaching temperatures of up to 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit, complex chemical reactions ensued. The resulting Mazama ash holds some properties that are similar to those in portland cement.

Today, most construction projects use portland cement, which takes an excessive amount of energy to create. Materials are mined from several different sources and transported, then heated to thousands of...

Photo by Cait McCusker

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) program has released its 2020 general research request for proposals. Faculty at NITC's partner universities* are invited to submit abstracts by March 23, 2020.

Through funding provided by the U.S. DOT, we will award up to $1,000,000 to research projects that support NITC’s theme: improving mobility of people and goods to build strong communities. Our theme includes a few key topics:

Increasing access to opportunities.

Well-connected regions and communities can improve social equity by providing access to jobs, services, recreation, and social opportunities. Research should examine barriers to access, including the connections between transportation, land use, and housing. It should look at how to overcome these barriers and improve accessibility, affordability, and equity in our communities.

Improving multi-modal planning and shared use of infrastructure.

Improved mobility requires a range of options for moving people and goods. As concepts of mobility evolve, research is needed to understand how people and firms make mode choices so that we can design better multi-modal systems. Research should examine how...

LinkedIn

Tell us about yourself?

I’m a third-generation college student from rural Oregon who has always had a passion for solving complicated problems and wading through numbers. My early days were spent with Camp Fire USA exploring local wilderness areas and teaching the younger kids about how to survive. As I grew older, my hobbies began to shift towards the virtual world. Video games became a big part of my life around middle school, with them becoming the dominant hobby during high school. As school became more intensive, video games had to take a back seat, becoming a weekend hobby. During school, I devoted time to helping my classmates and anyone else in the degree who needed it. I never went so far as to give the other students answers, but I would explain terms and equations and do my best to guide them towards the right process.

...

Daniel Iwicki, Oregon Institute of Technology

Daniel Iwicki is a civil engineering student and Oregon Tech's ASCE-AGC Student Chapter President. He won a nationwide essay competition in 2018 related to effects of autonomous vehicles on rural areas and was invited to present his work at the National Conference on Rural Public and Intercity Bus Transportation. Daniel has been a NITC Scholar and has represented Oregon Tech and NITC at several events including the TRB Annual Meeting.

LinkedIn | Oregon Tech Profile

Tell us about yourself?

I am a senior civil engineering student at Oregon Institute of Technology. Born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, I moved out to Oregon to finish school in 2016. Before arriving at Oregon Tech I wanted to build bridges; I quickly found out that transportation was more my passion. During my first summer in Oregon, I worked as a research assistant on a NITC-funded project and was a co-author for a study on vibration modal analysis of bridges titles Development of RDSETGO: A Rapidly Deployable Structural Evaluation Toolkit for Global Observation. The following school year I took on the role as president...