Welcome from the Director

It gives me immense pleasure to serve our region as director of the Southern Plains Transportation Center (SPTC). According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Strategic Plan FY 2022-2026, “our infrastructure is failing to keep up with growing transportation needs to maintain economic strength and compete in a global market.” At the same time, “climate change presents a significant and growing risk to the safety, effectiveness, equity, and sustainability of the transportation infrastructure and the communities it serves” This is especially applicable to Region 6 states where a rapid upsurge in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events coupled with an accelerated pace of climate change are impacting the durability and service life of the aging transportation infrastructure at an unprecedented rate, with disproportionate effects in tribal, rural, low-income, and underserved communities. Between 2012 and 2021, Region 6 states spent $25B annually to combat climate extremes. With five of the nation’s top seven cargo ports located on Region 6 coasts, weather and climate extremes threaten economic growth and trigger social and supply-chain disruptions. Extreme weather disrupts vehicle-to-everything (V2E) communications and threatens safety.

Consequently, Enhancing Economic Prosperity and Safety through Durable and Climate Resilient Transportation and Freight Infrastructure is the primary focus of SPTC’s research, education and workforce enhancement goals. SPTC’s work program assess and mitigates vulnerability of transportation infrastructure to climate change, extreme weather, and sea-level rise through innovative research, effective implementation, trained workforce, strong leadership, and well-organized programs. Improving the resilience of at-risk infrastructure enhances economic competitiveness and safety. Three Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), one Historically Black College and University (HBCU), one Native American institution, and one of the nation’s largest community colleges join seven Carnegie R1 research universities to develop stakeholder-driven breakthrough technologies, tools, and methods and implement them rapidly.

In addition to addressing critical regional and national needs, access to unique resources and tremendous opportunity to engage under-represented groups (particularly, Native American, Hispanic, African American, Women, and First-in-the-Family-to-Attend-College) make this focus important and timely.

We are excited about creating opportunity for collaborations that will cross state and institutional borders, resulting in a synergy of ideas. We look forward to fostering future engineers, scientists, and others who will continue the good work we begin at SPTC. We are confident the problems our experienced faculty, students and researchers solve here will have a lasting impact in Region 6 and in the nation.