University of Washington

The college of Engineering at Oregon State University is currently in its second season of hosting a podcast called Engineering Out Loud. In this second season, their second episode featured two PacTrans PIs. Titled By Air & By Land, this episode interviewed PacTrans PI and OSU Associate Professor Katherine Hunter-Zaworski, and PacTrans Associate Director and OSU Associate Professor David Hurwitz about their respective areas of research. Katherine Hunter-Zaworski studies subjects that bring the gap between transportation engineering and rehabilitation engineering. In this podcast she discusses work that efforts to help make airplane more accessible to handicapped individuals, "Importance of accessible transportation is essential for independence. Accessible transportation enables people to get an education, to go to work, to live independently, and really to have full inclusion." David Hurwitz spends significant amounts of time and research power exploring the interaction between vehicles and bicycles. His lab has both a vehicle simulator and a bicycle simulator. In these simulations they can preprogram a series of interactions and have specialized equipment that allows them to observe where the participant's vision is focused and for how long in each situation, "Mixed mode conflicts tend to be more severe than other types of crash conflicts, in part because of the lack of safety equipment that a pedestrian or a bicyclists has access to. They're not surrounded by thousands of pounds of crash designed vehicle systems…so they're at risk. They are what some would term "vulnerable populations." With our new FAST Act grant focusing on Mobility in the Pacific Northwest, both of these researchers and their work are well situated to make significant contributions to our larger impact. TWO PACTRANS PIS INTERVIEWED IN ENGINEERING OUT LOUD "Importance of accessible transportation is essential for independence. Accessible transportation enables people to get an education, to go to work, to live independently, and really to have full inclusion." — Katherine Hunter-Zaworski 34 Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium

• Cover