University of Washington

Letter from the Director On behalf of PacTrans, I would like to express our tremendous appreciation for your support over the past year! This is our second year operating two Region 10 University Transportation Centers (UTCs) funded by SAFETY-LU and by MAP-21, respectively. In addition to our gradual transition from a general center, addressing regional needs in all five USDOT defined strategic direction (SAFETY-LU), to a safety-focused regional UTC (MAP-21), special efforts were made to facilitate technology transfer activities. I am excited to report a couple of highlights in the 2015-2016 fiscal year operations of PacTrans. PacTrans made a call for success stories resulted from its funded research projects. Eight applications were selected to receive technology transfer funds. These selected success stories cover a variety of research fields and can be found at http://depts.washington.edu/ pactrans/category/partnerships-and-tech-transfer/success-stories/. Many of these stories have generated general interest from the public and been broadly reported by news media. To further link potential users to UTC research products, PacTrans hosted a Technology Transfer Workshop at the 2016 ASCE International Conference on Transportation and Development in June 2016 with the Region 6 UTC. This workshop stimulated discussion on how UTC research outcomes may be applied to effectively address real-world transportation challenges. This year, another highlight here at PacTrans was our support to student activities which achieved resounding success consortium-wide. University of Washington's Hyperloop Team received the Safety Subsystem Technical Excellence Award for its pod design shown at the design competition weekend and earned a spot among the 26 selected teams to advance to the building phase. University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Steel Bridge team took 6th place overall at the 2016 National Student Bridge Competition. University of Idaho (UI) clean snowmobile team took 7th place overall in the Internal Combustion Class at the SAE International Clean Snowmobile Challenge in March 2016. This team won in the areas of best fuel economy, most likely to be manufactured, most sportsmanlike winners, and most innovative emissions design. Also, PacTrans enhanced its regional leadership through organizing the Northwest Transportation Conference, Region 10 Transportation Conference, Region 10 Student Conference, Region 10 Transportation Workshops, and Regional Transportation Seminars. Over a thousand of people attended and engaged in these events collectively. Our research and educational activities have been very active. All the 19 research projects funded in the 2015 – 2016 fiscal year were either completed or in progress. Findings of these research projects will be presented and demonstrated at the forthcoming 2016 Region 10 Transportation Conference scheduled on October 14. Additionally, six new multi- institutional research projects and 18 small projects have been selected for funding in fiscal year 2016-2017. You will find more useful information about these activities in this PacTrans Annual Report. Sincerely yours, Yinhai Wang, PhD, Professor DIRECTOR OF PACTRANS 1 2014-2015 Annual Report

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