The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in Temple University’s College of Engineering has entered into a five-year, $5 million agreement with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) to serve as a resource center and technical advisor to the Commonwealth’s transportation agency.
“Some of the challenges and problems facing PennDOT can be solved with traditional engineering, but others require a level of applied research that can only be found in the resources, facilities and faculty expertise of a university,” said Michel Boufadel, Department Chair and Professor |
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of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Temple. “That is why PennDOT is interested in having such an agreement with Temple.”
Boufadel said the intergovernmental agreement, which began in September, took nearly a year to negotiate. It will include both faculty and students, and will allow for the integration of research and applied work.
“I think the critical part was to demonstrate to PennDOT that, one, Temple has the expertise that they were seeking, and two, that we will address their real-time challenges through applied research and not focus on theoretical research,” he said.
While the main part of the intergovernmental agreement will focus on civil engineering issues such as the identification of highway and bridge repair and maintenance best practices, Boufadel said environmental issues and other technical research projects will also be important. He said that faculty from other Temple departments will be involved in various projects in an effort to advance PennDOT’s strategic agenda. All projects will be identified and developed in a coordinated fashion between the university and PennDOT.
Boufadel said the agreement strengthens his department, as well as the College of Engineering, by creating a de facto, multidisciplinary center that will recruit faculty and students from other departments and universities to work on infrastructure projects. It is also in line with the strategic research initiative started by the College of Engineering in 2003.
The agreement is also important to PennDOT, said Michael Bonini, PennDOT’s Research Program Manager, as it enables the transportation agency to strengthen its relationship with Pennsylvania universities in an effort to actively engage students to consider future careers in the transportation industry by working on applied research projects that address real-world issues.
Boufadel anticipates the program will help recruit additional engineering faculty with expertise in transportation-related areas to participate in future projects. Already, his department has recruited one new faculty member from the University of Oklahoma, Assistant Professor Naji Khoury, who worked with the Oklahoma Department of Transportation and holds a patent for a process that uses recycled chemical waste under road asphalt.
Boufadel said the agreement was made possible by the support of Engineering Dean Keya Sadeghipour, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Lisa Staiano-Coico and Senior Vice President for Research and Strategic Initiatives Larry Lemanski.
PennDOT has similar agreements with Penn State University and the University of Pittsburgh.
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