Bhavana Bhardwaj, a graduate research assistant with NDSU’s Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute, was awarded a scholarship at the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Minnesota Fall Forum.

The $1,000 award recognizes Bhardwaj’s interest in intelligent transportation systems, her academic achievements and her research presentation at the 2019 American Society of Civil Engineers-International Conference on Transportation and Development.

Bhardwaj is a software engineering doctoral student at NDSU. She is the first NDSU student to be awarded a scholarship from the forum.

ITS Minnesota includes individuals and local, regional and national organizations interested in the development of Minnesota’s ITS Industry.

Bhardwaj’s paper, “Railroad Track Irregularities Position Accuracy Assessments Using Low-Cost Sensors on a Hi-Rail Vehicle,” describes research to investigate the potential use of low-cost sensors aboard rail vehicles to automatically and continuously monitor for inertial events caused by irregular track geometry. The research introduces a signal processing and statistical method to dramatically improve the ability to estimate the location of potential track irregularities. The method may help railroads detect rail problems early and provide better focus on inspection and repair efforts.

The paper’s co-authors were R. Bridgelall, assistant professor of transportation and logistics; Pan Lu, associate professor of transportation and logistics; and N. Dhingra, NDSU transportation and logistics doctoral student.

Bridgelall and Lu are researchers with NDSU’s Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute and Dhingra is a graduate research assistant at the institute

As a student-focused, land grant, research university, we serve our citizens.