Issue link: http://uwashington.uberflip.com/i/1047596
Letter from the Director With your great support and care, PacTrans continued its success over the past year in research, education, workforce development, outreach, and technology transfer activities toward our goal of making PacTrans the research engine, applied technology showcase, workforce development base, educational leader, information center, and collaboration platform for Region 10 on transportation safety and mobility improvements. Highlights of our major activities in the 2017-2018 fiscal year are as follows: To further enhance its leadership across Region 10, PacTrans organized several important research events, such as the Commuter Trip Reduction (CTR) Workshop and Mobility Technology Transfer Workshop, in addition to its conventional signature events represented by the Region 10 Transportation Conference, Region 10 Student Conference, and Region 10 Transportation Seminars. A variety of important safety and mobility issues were discussed at these events and critical transportation issues in Region 10 were identified. These issues were highlighted in the call for proposals and prioritized in the research project selection process of PacTrans funded research projects. PacTrans made a big push for technology transfer. Fifteen research projects with success stories were selected for technology transfer funding that would help project teams make connections to the technology users and develop user friendly test applications or promotion materials to accelerate the technology transfer process. Also, PacTrans organized a Technology Transfer Workshop with Region 7 UTC at the 2018 ASCE International Conference on Transportation and Development in Pittsburgh. This workshop brought transportation practitioners and researchers together to discuss important issues on technology transfer. Over 100 people participated in this workshop. PacTrans fully recognized the workforce development challenges with the forthcoming new technologies including connected and autonomous vehicles, smart cities, etc. A multi-institutional educational research project was funded to establish the PacTrans Workforce Development Institute in response to the regional workforce development needs. Additionally, PacTrans co-organized a Norwegian Fish Industry Transportation Challenge Event with several Norwegian transportation agency and university partners to provide opportunities for PacTrans and Norwegian university students to work together on a challenging real-world issue. Twelve PacTrans students received funding to go to Norway for a week to participate in this event, which received overwhelming favorable comments from both students and practitioners. In summary, this past year was fruitful and exciting for PacTrans. You will find more information about PacTrans' activities in this PacTrans Annual Report. Our goal is a report that is informative and useful to both internal and external readers. We also hope that it will bring to light, every key milestone we have reached with your great support. We welcome any suggestions or feedback you may have on our work and highly appreciate your continued support! Sincerely yours, Yinhai Wang, Ph.D., P.E., Professor DIRECTOR OF PACTRANS 1 2017 – 2018 Annual Report