EVENT: U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx will visit the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Center for Transportation Research (CTR) to meet with graduate students, faculty members and researchers. Foxx will learn how the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Tier 1 University Transportation Center grant program and other CTR projects and programs are advancing world-class transportation research and innovations. Foxx will spend the morning with leaders from The University of Texas at Austin, the Texas Department of Transportation and local industry representatives.
WHEN: Friday, April 24
WHO’S INVITED: Media are invited to a 10:15-10:45 a.m. interactive session highlighting UT Austin-led innovations in traffic modeling and connected/automated vehicle technologies, including discussion with transportation and wireless networking/communications group researchers in CTR’s Data-supported Transportation Operations and Planning Center (D-STOP), a U.S. Department of Transportation Tier 1 research center. Foxx and D-STOP researchers will have press availability from 10:45 to 11 a.m.
WHERE: TACC Visualization Laboratory, 201 East 24th St., Peter O’Donnell Building (POB), southeast corner of Speedway and 24th Street.
BACKGROUND: As U.S. secretary of transportation, Anthony Foxx leads an agency with more than 55,000 employees and a $70 billion budget that oversees air, maritime and surface transportation. His primary goal is to ensure that America maintains the safest, most efficient transportation system in the world. Foxx joined the U.S. Department of Transportation after serving as the mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, from 2009 to 2013. During that time, he made efficient and innovative transportation investments the centerpiece of Charlotte’s job creation and economic recovery efforts. Foxx is an attorney and has spent much of his career in private practice. He received a law degree from New York University’s School of Law and a bachelor’s degree in history from Davidson College in North Carolina. For more information, visit the U.S. DOT website.
