New faces and familiar faces came together Feb. 16 and 17, 2017 to celebrate 30 years of the past, present and future of California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology’s PATH@30 symposium.
“We really enjoyed seeing so many familiar faces at the symposium and to realize how many new people and projects we’ve developed over the years,” says PATH Co-Director Tom West. “I am excited to see what we’ll do in the next 30 years.”
The symposium, held in the Sibley Auditorium in the Bechtel Engineering Center, attracted about 175 participants, including past, present, and future PATH researchers, leaders, and partners.
While the symposium covered past achievements to identify how development and implementation of new technologies will unfold from this point forward, the focus of the symposium was to envision the future of transportation given collective experience and the rapid changes in technology, public policy, traveler expectations and transportation performance.
“It’s important to look back and think on successes, but we really need to think ahead and think about building the next generation of infrastructure in the US and beyond,” says UC Berkeley College of Engineering Dean Shankar Sastry, who welcomed attendees along with Institute of Transportation Studies Berkeley Director Alexandre Bayen, and PATH Co-Director and Berkeley Deep Drive Director Trevor Darrell.
Sessions included: Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) in the Making: A thirty-year retrospective; California Leadership in ITS: What does the past tell us about the future?; Current State of Transportation Innovation; Innovative Transportation Solutions for the Next Thirty Years; Industry's Perspective: Technology advancements and transformational changes in transportation; Positioning California, PATH, and Our Partners for Success in the Coming Decades; Lessons From the Trenches: How our PATH experience prepared us for going out into the wider world to solve problems; and Defining the Path for the Future of Transportation.
The symposium also helped PATH identify opportunities for collaboration in the future during the PATH Alumni Exchange session. The series of concurrent, topical, breakout sessions featured past, current, and future partners and friends discussing their involvement in the development of ITS, their current focus, as well as suggestions for future collaboration.
“We have a strong track record over the past 30 years, I look forward to seeing where vehicle automation research including Berkeley Deep Drive will take PATH in the next 30," says Darrell.
Check out more pictures from the symposium on Facebook.