Civil Engineering Students Are Three-Time Traffic Bowl Champions

Subhadipto Poddar

ITE Student Chapter accepts award for first place win at the 2023 MOVITE Traffic Bowl

At the spring 2023 meeting of the Missouri Valley District of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (MOVITE), teams from the U of A, Iowa State University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln competed in the annual Traffic Bowl. The Traffic Bowl competition is a "Jeopardy" style quiz game consisting of answers and questions covering a variety of topics related to transportation engineering. This is an annual competition that serves as the precursor to the international competition.

The Arkansas team, mentored by civil engineering associate professor Sarah Hernandez, consisted of M.S. students Geoffrey Agorku and Lizbeth Juarez and Ph.D. student Sanjeev Bhurtyal. The U of A was the winner of the 2023 Traffic Bowl, marking their third consecutive win at the MOVITE spring meeting. With their victory in the 2023 MOVITE Traffic Bowl, this team of traffic engineers will next compete at the upcoming ITE National Meeting, to be held in Portland, Oregon, in August 2023.

In addition to the team recognition, Agorku has been awarded first place in the student poster competition with his poster titled "Automated, Real-Time Barge Traffic Detection System Using Pre-Existing Traffic Cameras." Bhurtyal has been awarded third place in the student paper competition for his paper titled "Predicting Waterborne Commerce Statistics from AIS Using Machine Learning".

The Institute of Transportation Engineers is the professional society of persons engaged in the planning, design and operation of streets, highways and other transportation facilities. The Missouri Valley District, consisting of members from Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma, was chartered in 1951, with the U of A chapter joining in 1993. The U of A ITE Student Chapter is active and is always looking for new members. This year's outreach event will focus on campus pedestrian safety.  If you have interest in joining, please reach out to the chapter president, Sanjeev Bhurtyal.