University of Michigan student team wins National Transportation Technology Tournament

Source: Michi­gan Engi­neer­ing Research News

A Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan stu­dent team won the sec­ond annu­al Trans­porta­tion Tech­nol­o­gy Tour­na­ment, beat­ing out five oth­er final­ists from uni­ver­si­ties across the coun­try. The tour­na­ment is held on by the Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (U.S. DOT) and the Nation­al Oper­a­tions Cen­ter of Excel­lence (NOCoE).

The Michi­gan team’s win­ning pre­sen­ta­tion, Cor­ri­dor Man­age­ment in the I‑75/I‑696 Influ­ence area, focused on mit­i­gat­ing heavy, peak-hour traf­fic vol­ume on I‑75 between Detroit and Troy, Mich. and on east and west­bound I‑696 in the Detroit sub­urbs by uti­liz­ing shut­tles and car pools for major employ­ers like Gen­er­al Motors and Chrysler.

The stu­dents pre­sent­ed their solu­tion to a pan­el of pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor judges. Patrick Son, man­ag­ing direc­tor of NOCoE, said Michigan’s solu­tion was imag­i­na­tive and com­plete­ly deployable.

“These stu­dents devel­oped prac­ti­cal solu­tions to a prob­lem that has stalled South­east Michi­gan for decades,” Son said. “That’s exact­ly the kind of inge­nu­ity we need as we address cru­cial work­force issues ahead.”

Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan team mem­ber Xia­tong Sun, a civ­il and envi­ron­men­tal grad­u­ate stu­dent, said the oth­er final­ist teams pro­posed com­pet­i­tive ideas.

“We had the con­fi­dence after yesterday’s rehearsal, but today we lis­tened to oth­ers pre­sen­ta­tions and we thought they were also very good,” Sun said.

Oth­er team mem­bers, Yan Zhao and Alex Sundt said the skills they devel­oped for pitch­ing ideas is cru­cial as they move into their careers.

“Know­ing how to present to gov­ern­ment agen­cies and to impor­tant peo­ple, and how they want to lis­ten to a pre­sen­ta­tion, that pitch style, I’ve nev­er got­ten that in my edu­ca­tion before, so this was a big help,” Sundt, a civ­il and envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing grad­u­ate stu­dent, said.

Zhao, a mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing grad­u­ate stu­dent, agreed.

“We learned that soft skills are real­ly impor­tant,” Zhoa said. “We are used to solv­ing equa­tions and we are used to pre­sent­ing in front of a lot of aca­d­e­m­ic peo­ple but when we solve real-life prob­lems, we have to present our solu­tions to peo­ple who may not be famil­iar with equa­tions. We have to explain the details and our rea­son­ing behind it. That will be real­ly help­ful in my future.”

The tour­na­ment took place dur­ing the Insti­tute of Trans­porta­tion Engi­neers (ITE) Annu­al Meet­ing in Austin, TX. The Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan team was among five final­ist teams to make pre­sen­ta­tions. The oth­er teams were from Flori­da Inter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee, Knoxville and two teams from the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Florida.