As Director of the Lewis Mumford Center at the State University of New York at Albany, Dr. Catherine T. Lawson has announced this week that its Albany Visualization And Informatics Lab (AVAIL) has been selected to develop advanced web-based data analysis tools for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The prestigious project is focused on supporting evidence-based decisions about vehicle travel data across the country. Utilizing innovative visualizations and analysis techniques, AVAIL will create software to enable government agencies, academic institutions, private industry and the general public to benefit from improved data covering the permitting of overweight vehicles, truck routing, trends in freight movement, noise and air pollution, pavement design, safety implications of various mixes of vehicles, average daily traffic, signal timing, and more! AVAIL serves as a multidisciplinary workforce development bridge for its university graduate students. Pairing students with full-time AVAIL staff on software development and project management tasks creates a cooperative learning environment where subjects learned in the classroom can be solidified with hands-on experience. After leaving the AVAIL team, its graduates are better prepared to meet the needs of today’s job market.

For more information on the Lab, please visit the website at: www.albany.edu/avail/