Jackson State University

Established in 2006, the Institute for Multimodal Transportation (IMTrans) at Jackson State University (JSU) is one of 60 UTCs created under SAFETEA-LU. The theme of IMTrans is managing metropolitan mobility, with a long-term objective to establish a national resource for multidisciplinary research and education that integrates multiple modes of transportation. In the past few years, IMTrans has conducted several education, research, and transportation-related technology transfer projects to serve the community and the state of Mississippi.

In 2009, IMTrans funded the Summer Transportation Institute (STI) project, which recruited 20 minority high school students for a two-week summer camp program on JSU's campus. As part of the program, students experienced different transportation modes, transportation-related jobs and workplaces through numerous field trips, and attended rigorous lectures by JSU's Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty and transportation professionals from various industry and government agencies. Since 2011, Mississippi DOT (MDOT) has co-funded the STI project, and in 2013 JSU was officially selected by FHWA as the third institution in Mississippi to receive full STI funding from both MDOT and FHWA.

Every year, IMTrans is invited by MDOT to co-sponsor the state's annual public transportation summit. In 2012, IMTrans supported the local transit company Jatran, in a volunteer project which involved JSU students and faculty in developing GIS maps for bus routes. In the past two years, IMTrans has co-funded and conducted two research projects titled, "Stateof- Practice Approaches and Technologies for Inventory Data Collection of Mississippi's Public Road System," and "Emergency Evacuation Study for the Greater Jackson Area." These projects have supported four graduate research assistants. Over the past two years, four TRB papers and three journal articles based on IMTrans research were coauthored by students and faculty, and accepted for publication.

Aerial imagery data analyzed in inventory data collection study. Photo courtesy of Mina Zhou.

Mississippi Summer Transportation Institute (MSTI) classroom. Photo courtesy of Imelda Simeon.

JSU's football stadium and connecting networks, which have been considered in an emergency evacuation study. Photo courtesy of Feng Wang.