Transportation Engineering Student Presents Four Papers at Annual Research Meeting

Earlier this month, Utah State University Ph.D. student Sailesh Acharya presented four papers in Washington D.C. at the 2022 Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting.

“Attending the conference was a wonderful experience,” Acharya said. “This is the first time I was attending the Transportation Research Board conference and presenting this much research in that huge crowd of researchers from around the globe. I wish to continue this in coming years.”

Acharya authored two of the papers with Michelle Mekker, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering; one with Patrick Singleton, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering; and one with Prasanna Humagain, a fellow USU student.

The papers addressed a variety of transportation topics from how poor air quality and inclement weather impacted the number of people using non-motorized trails to how people feel about adopting connected and autonomous vehicles.

Acharya said it was encouraging for him to present this work to other researchers.

“They appreciated my work and they highlighted some of the limitations so I can improve these results in future studies,” he said.

For Acharya, it was especially rewarding to present a paper he had co-authored with another student because of the amount of autonomy they had in conducting the research.