The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute main complex in Blacksburg, Virginia

Welcome to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute

The Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) continues to serve as Virginia Tech's largest university-level research center and is dedicated to conducting research to save lives, save time and save money in the transportation field by developing and using state-of-the-art tools, techniques, and technologies to solve transportation challenges. Its cutting-edge research is effecting significant change in public policies in the transportation domain on both the state and national levels.

VTTI continues its success by employing an elite team of multi-disciplinary researchers, engineers, technicians, support staff, and students. The Institute conducts applied research to develop new techniques and technologies to study transportation challenges from various perspectives: vehicle, driver, infrastructure, and environment. To accomplish its ground-breaking research, the Institute has at its disposal a wide-range of tools to explore transportation problems including facilities such as the Virginia Smart Road and VTTI's internally-developed Data Acquisition System (DAS). These capabilities have earned VTTI a unique standing in the transportation research field and have made the Institute a "one-stop-shop" for transportation research, evaluation, analysis and development.

Open House: Oct. 1, 2008, 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Tours of the VTTI facilities and the Virginia Smart Road are available to the public once a year, spring or fall depending on our research schedule. For more information...

School Day: Oct. 1, 2008, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Students from first grade through college are given an opportunity to tour VTTI's facilities and the Virginia Smart Road twice a year. VTTI strives to work around school breaks, early release days and SOL testing when possible. For more information...

VTTI's Building One

Director's Message

Investing in Infrastructure - As VTTI has grown and matured, so have its facilities, including a new 22,000-square-foot building. This building houses all of the VTTI "Safety Centers" including the National Surface Transportation Safety Center for Excellence (STSCE). In addition, VDOT supplied us with a mobile asphalt laboratory to expand our infrastructure research capacity.

Investing in Technology - VTTI has become a leader in naturalistic, real-world driving research. Our experts have developed data acquisition systems (DASs) that have collected over 35 terabytes of naturalistic data and the tools to analyze this data. In 2006 they began development of a next-generation DAS. With these advances, VTTI is now poised to garner the largest naturalistic transportation study ever attempted.

Investing in People - We continue to invest in our team and hire talented researchers, engineers, technicians, support staff, and students. We have forged relationships with Virginia Tech's Department of Mechanical Engineering and the School for Biomedical Engineering and Science to develop the Center for Injury Biomechanics-Transportation. We have also hired a product development center director to take VTTI to the next stage-patents, licensing, and a spin-off company.

Dr. Tom Dingus at a press conference

Tom Dingus, Director

Since 1996, Tom Dingus has managed the operations and research at VTTI. This multi-disciplinary organization conducts $12 million annually in sponsored research. Prior to joining Virginia Tech, Tom Dingus was founding director of the National Center for Transportation Technology at the University of Idaho and was an associate director of the Center for Computer-Aided Design at the University of Iowa.

Dingus has served as principal investigator on a number of programs and projects thus far in his career. These have included high-fidelity simulator studies at the University of Iowa, instrumented vehicle research both on-road and on test tracks, and large-scale naturalistic studies of driving. This experience has included serving as the principal investigator on an existing National Highway Transportation Safety Administration Indefinite Quantity Contract (IQC).

Dingus has conducted transportation safety and human factors research since 1984, including the safety and usability of advanced in-vehicle devices, the development of crash avoidance technology, large-scale studies of driver behavior and performance, studies of truck driver fatigue, and driver distraction and attention research.

The Smart Road weather making system in operation

VTTI Background

In 1996, the Institute was designated as one of three Federal Highway Administration/Federal Transit Administration Intelligent Transportation Systems (FHWA/FTA ITS) Research Centers of Excellence. Since then, VTTI has grown tremendously and has garnered a reputation as one of the leading transportation research institutions in the nation. Its cutting-edge research is effecting significant change in public policies in the transportation domain on both the state and national levels. In 2005, due to VTTI's continued research leadership, VTTI was designated the National Surface Transportation Safety Center for Excellence (STSCE).