The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is establishing the UTC Research Institute to pursue increased research funding, interdisciplinary collaboration across campus and support for community and local industry priorities.
Chancellor Steven Angle introduced the initiative May 1 at the Multidisciplinary Research Building on the UTC campus, where the institute will be headquartered.
Dr. Mina Sartipi, founding director of the UTC Center for Urban Informatics and Progress (CUIP), will lead the UTC Research Institute. Sartipi also holds a joint appointment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The institute will focus on transportation (including intelligent transportation systems, electric vehicle and battery technologies, automation, multimodal systems, policy and planning, cybersecurity, privacy and infrastructure) and quantum technologies (including computing, sensing and networks).
The UTC Research Institute intends its pursuit of community- and funding-driven research to expand resources and opportunities across campus and disciplines, engaging scholars whose expertise can bring interdisciplinary depth to exploring solutions to complex problems, says Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Jerold Hale.
“A focal point of the new institute will be to promote interdisciplinary research involving faculty and staff from across the university. That interdisciplinary approach will promote strategic research growth to benefit not only the Chattanooga community but also the region, state and country.”
The new institute will be the home of the UTC Center of Excellence in Applied Computational Science and Engineering and CUIP.
According to Sartipi, federal agencies like the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, the National Science Foundation and others are financing research projects that use a multidisciplinary and multi-institutional approach to solving complex problems.
“Having teams from across campus in solving problems positions UTC to be more competitive when pursuing research funding and will create a more substantial and broader impact from our research,” Sartipi notes.
More on Sartipi
Sartipi joined UTC as an assistant professor of computer science in 2006 after earning a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from Georgia Tech University, where she also earned a master’s degree in 2003. She earned a degree in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, in 2001.
Sartipi was designated as a UC Foundation Professor and a Guerry Professor at UTC in 2015 and 2020, respectively, was named as a faculty member of the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education in 2018, and was awarded a joint faculty appointment at Oak Ridge in 2023.
Sartipi has led research funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the state of Tennessee, the Lyndhurst Foundation and various industry organizations.
These projects focused on data-driven approaches to real-world challenges in smart city applications directed at mobility, energy and health.
At CUIP, Sartipi has coordinated cross-disciplinary research and strategic visions for urbanism and smart city advancement.
Sartipi serves on ?various technical program committee?s for national workshops and conferences on topics related to AI and smart city operations. In addition, she’s delivered keynote speeches and presentations to the U.S. Congressional caucus on smart cities, at Smart Cities Connect ?conferences and ?to the National Transportation Training Directors organization.
In 2020, Sartipi delivered an invited TEDx Talk presentation, “Leveraging Big Data for a Better Tomorrow.”
Sartipi has been a senior member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers since 2016 and serves as a member of the board of directors for multiple startup and nonprofit organizations, including EPB, The Enterprise Center of Chattanooga, Chattanooga Urban Studio, Thrive Regional Partnership, GridMatrix, MoHuman and Variable, Inc.
Source: UTC