{"id":145733,"date":"2025-03-31T09:23:28","date_gmt":"2025-03-31T13:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733///news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733//www.ucf.edu/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733//news/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733//?p=145733"},"modified":"2025-03-31T09:23:28","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T13:23:28","slug":"professor-mohamed-abdel-aty-earns-medal-of-societal-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733///news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733//www.ucf.edu/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733//news/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733//professor-mohamed-abdel-aty-earns-medal-of-societal-impact/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733//","title":{"rendered":"Professor Mohamed Abdel-Aty Earns Medal of Societal Impact"},"content":{"rendered":"
Every professor makes an impact on the students they teach and mentor. Through their service to the department or college, they can even leave a lasting mark on the university. But some professors have made significant contributions beyond academia, and their discoveries have not only improved society but changed the world for the better./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/n
These faculty members are awarded with the UCF Medal of Societal Impact, which recognizes those who have used their research in engineering, science or medicine to benefit humankind. This year/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/u2019s recipient is Professor Mohamed Abdel-Aty, a transportation safety expert and a researcher in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering. He is the second recipient of this award, which was also given to CREOL Professor Shin-Tson Wu in 2024./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/n
/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/u201cI/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/u2019m grateful to my students and to UCF,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/u201d Abdel-Aty says. /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/u201cIt gives me great pleasure to receive this particular recognition as it means that my research has impacted society and contributed to saving and improving lives of many people at home and beyond./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/u201d/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/n
Abdel-Aty is recognized globally as a leader in the field of transportation engineering. His research focuses on traffic safety, mobility and transportation technology, and he/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/u2019s pioneered a number of real-time systems to improve driver and pedestrian safety. Over the three decades he has spent at UCF, Abdel-Aty has garnered more than $32 million in research funding./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/n
With this support, Abdel-Aty and his team in the UCF Smart and Safe Transportation (SST) Lab have developed CitySim, which is a database of vehicle trajectories collected by drones of 21 challenging highway locations. Researchers and vehicle manufacturers are using it to develop autonomous vehicles/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/u2019 algorithms and safety features. More than 480 individuals from 248 institutions are now using this data. They/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/u2019ve also created software that can identify traffic conflicts and detect near-miss events on roadways based on these trajectories./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/n
/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/u201cI am specifically fond of ideas that I started about 25 years ago and kept improving until in 2019, when I won a U.S. Department of Transportation national challenge and the Prince Michael International Road Safety Award,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/u201d Abdel-Aty says. /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/u201cCurrently a system based on these ideas is implemented in the Traffic Management Center by FDOT and emulated in several countries. The idea is simply to predict crashes five to 10 minutes before they occur using real-time traffic and weather data, and using Active Traffic Management techniques to improve the traffic conditions./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/u201d/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/n
Abdel-Aty says that research projects such as these are among his greatest achievements as they/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/u2019ve not only led to the innovative implementation of transportation systems, but have also changed much of the current state-of-the-art in research and practice./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/145733/n