Despite a global pandemic in 2020 RailTEC organized nine William W. Hay Railroad Engineering Seminars and reached an audience of over 1,300 students, faculty and industry professionals. Speaker highlights included Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) Administrator Ron Batory and FRA Director of the Office of Research, Development and Technology Dr. Maryam Allahyar. At the beginning of the year seminars were held in-person and live streamed. Ultimately the seminars pivoted to being fully online.
Dr. David Thurston, Canadian Pacific Railway, was the last William W. Hay Railroad Engineering Seminar Series speaker of 2020. Links to his presentation, as well as other speakers’ during the year, can be found listed below, on our William W. Hay Railroad Engineering Seminar page, or on our RailTEC YouTube channel. A big thank you to all the presenters who shared their time and knowledge this semester. Please join us in early February when online seminars begin again.
2020 William W. Hay Railroad Engineering Seminar speakers
- 07 Feb 2020 | Ronald Batory, FRA, Update from the Honorable Ronald L. Batory (Seminar not recorded.)
- 14 Feb 2020 | Zhen Yang, Delft University of Technology, Wheel-rail dynamic interactions and related problems (Seminar not recorded.)
- 21 Feb 2020 | Dimitris Rizos, University of South Carolina, Remote Sensing Techniques for Railway Infrastructure Monitoring
- 28 Feb 2020 | Chuck Coyle, Bill Kleftis and Rich Matusiak, New York Air Brake (NYAB), Development of Autonomous Heavy-Haul Freight Trains
- 28 Aug 2020 | Marcus Dersch, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Timber Crosstie Spike Failures: Overview, Loading Demands, and Mitigation Considerations
- 11 Sep 2020 | Richard Fox-Ivey, Railmetrics, Innovations in Track Inspection – The Use of 3D Laser Sensing and AI to Detect Changes in Track Condition
- 06 Nov 2020 | Maryam Allahyar, FRA, FRA Research, Development, and Technology Overview
- 20 Nov 2020 | Bill Spencer, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Autonomous wireless monitoring and assessment of railroad bridges
- 04 Dec 2020 | David Thurston, Canadian Pacific Railway, Canadian Pacific and the Challenges of Crossing the Canadian Rockies