UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Thomas D. Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute (LTI) today (Aug. 2) announced that Elizabeth Traut will join the institute as an assistant research professor. 

She is scheduled to begin Aug. 15.

“We are very excited to have Dr. Traut join our team and look forward to helping her identify opportunities to collaborate with our many outstanding colleagues on campus,” said Eric Donnell, LTI director and professor of civil engineering at Penn State. “We would like to offer special thanks to Dean Andrew Sears from the College of Information Sciences and Technology and Provost Nick Jones for their support in making this multidisciplinary opportunity a reality.”

Traut, who earned her doctorate in mechanical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, has spent the past four years working as a National Science Foundation Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability fellow at the University of Glasgow, as well as a postdoctoral researcher at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon. Her research interests include economic and statistical modeling of transportation-related systems, life-cycle assessment, engineering design, data science and optimization. 

“LTI’s multidisciplinary approach to transportation research will allow me to seek out exciting collaborations in many areas of expertise across the University,” said Traut. “I am also looking forward to working with Penn State’s excellent students.”

The Thomas D. Larson Pennsylvania Transportation Institute is Penn State’s transportation research center. Since its founding in 1968, the Larson Institute has maintained a threefold mission of research, education and service. The institute brings together top faculty, world-class facilities and enterprising students from across the University in partnership with public and private stakeholders to address critical transportation-related problems.