University of Pennsylvania and Carnegie Mellon receive $14 million grant

In partnership with CMU, Penn is participating in a $14 million, five-year transportation research grant to create a new national University Transportation Center (UTC) called Mobility 21.

Rahul Mangharam, TerraSwarm PI and associate professor in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science, is also the director of the UTC. This is the third Department of Transportation (DoT) award Penn and CMU have won since 2013. According to Professor Mangharam, the Penn team focuses on cross-disciplinary problems like autonomous vehicles, pedestrian and bicycle safety, and interregional transportation.

"I think there are a lot of new technologies that are coming in that should be enablers for making transportation safer and more efficient," says Mangharm. "We want to essentially take a very holistic view of introducing these technologies to address long-term problems.”