Ritchie Named Director of UCI's Institute of Transportation Studies
07.24.06 – UC Irvine’s Institute for Transportation Studies, a Calit2 affiliated research organization, has named a new director.
Stephen G. Ritchie, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UCI’s The Henry Samueli School of Engineering, will assume his new post effective Sept. 4, 2006. Richie, who was chair of UCI’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering from 1995-2000, is also a Calit2 academic affiliate.
|
He studies advanced traffic management and control systems, with a specific focus on development and application of new sensors and information technologies that can support more efficient transportation systems.
Ritchie's current research efforts focus on development and implementation of intelligent traffic detection, surveillance and operations systems based on vehicle signature analysis and re-identification. Such systems provide real-time origin-destination data, travel time, density and other link- or section-related measures of traffic system performance to enable implementation of next generation real-time freeway and arterial traffic management and control systems. Ritchie also is developing artificial neural networks for improved incident detection on freeways and arterials, and algorithms and tools for the measurement of traffic systems performance.
Richie, who served as chair of UCI’s graduate council in 2004-05, is currently a graduate advisor to civil engineering students. He was the founding editor-in-chief of the international journal Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies.
He replaces Will Recker, professor of civil and environmental engineering, who served as ITS director for more than 20 years.
ITS is a University of California Organized Research Unit with branches at UCI, Davis and Berkeley. It fosters interdisciplinary research on contemporary transportation issues and is part of the University of California Transportation Center, a federally designated center for transportation research. At UCI, the institute involves faculty and students from the schools of engineering, social sciences, social ecology, business, and information and computer sciences.