• The awards ceremony was attended by the UPM's vice-chancellor for economics, Antonio Hidalgo, accompanied by the chairlady of the Abertis Foundation, Elena Salgado, the director of the School of Civil Engineering, José Manuel Atienza, as well as the secretary of State for Transport and Urban Mobility, Isabel Pardo.
• The winner of the first Transport Infrastructure Management Research Award went to Dr Fernando Romero, for his work focused on better understanding the different GTD methodologies applied to mobility, while in the Road Safety category, the first prize went to Dr Javier Pérez for his research focused on studying active safety systems. 
• This week also sees the presentation of the Abertis International Network of Chairs awards in Mexico, France and Brazil, respectively, highlighting the importance of academic and research activity in making progress towards more sustainable and safer mobility.   

Madrid, 22 September 2022

The Abertis Chair, in conjunction with the Technical University of Madrid, today presented its 19th edition of the Spanish Research Awards in its two categories: Transport Infrastructure Management and Road Safety. These awards are a distinction that recognises the best end-of-degree dissertation or doctoral theses by university students from all over Spain related to road infrastructure management in all its aspects, whether technical, managerial, social or economic, such as those related to road safety.

In this edition, in the Transport Infrastructure Management category, the first prize was awarded to Dr Fernando Romero (Technical University of Madrid) for his doctoral thesis, Demand management measures in suburban areas with a toll highway alternative: impact on travel choices, which aims to understand better how different GTD (Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing) strategies affect mobility in suburban environments where there are competing alternatives of free and toll roads. To this end, it was studied in parallel how three types of measures affect passengers' choices and whether they improve the system’s efficiency. In the Road Safety category, the first prize went to Dr Javier Pérez (Technical University of Madrid) for his thesis Development and implementation of active safety systems in vehicles using spiking neutral networks, focused on the field of vehicle dynamics, concentrating the study on active safety systems, which through the use of impulse neural networks aims to emulate biological behaviour to take control of the vehicle in both traction and braking situations, thereby minimising the risk of accidents. Each of these awards is worth 7,000 euros.

As finalists in the category of Transport Infrastructure Management, the work of Dr Iria López Carreiro, author of the thesis MaaS Implementation Pathways has been recognised: A Multi-Stakeholder Approach, and Dr Xavier Ros Roca, author of Dynamic OD Matrix Estimation exploiting ICT traffic measurements. In the Road Safety category, the awarded works were those of Dr Sara Moll Montaner for her research into the Analysis of traffic functionality on conventional roads with the presence of cyclists and Dr María Almudena Sanjurjo for her thesis Statistical methods for the identification of driver behaviour patterns and the assignment of responsibility applied to the quasi-induced exposure method.

The awards ceremony held today at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid was presided over by the vice-chancellor for economics of the Technical University of Madrid, Antonio Hidalgo, the chairlady of the Abertis Foundation, Elena Salgado, together with José Manuel Atienza, director of the School of Civil Engineering, and the Spanish Secretary of State for Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda, Isabel Pardo. 

The chairlady of the Abertis Foundation, Elena Salgado, stressed during the event that "mobility today presents great challenges that must be tackled from all points of view. With these awards, we aspire to stimulate, generate and disseminate new knowledge to put it at the service of society as a whole and contribute to developing best practices and technologies at the service of people's mobility. This is a mission that is part of the DNA of our Group and its Foundation."

Abertis Chairs Awards in Mexico, Brazil and France

This week also saw the presentation of the Abertis Chairs awards in Mexico, Brazil and France, respectively.

In the case of Mexico, the prize-winning works went to Dr Juan Carlos Gallegos, in the Infrastructure and Transport Management category, for its work to develop a comprehensive model for managing the different assets that make up a road network. In the Road Safety category, the award went to Dr Anubis Alberto Navarro for his research to establish the influence of road safety education on the interaction of active road users with traffic signs, which concludes that failure to respect these signs is the most common cause of traffic accidents among pedestrians.

In Brazil, the winner of the Infrastructure and Transport Management category is Dr Shanna Trichês Lucchesi, author of a paper that analyses the effects of walkability on real estate valuation, the evidence and implications for public policies for low-income populations. In the Road Safety category, the study by Dr Murilo Ribeiro Rodrigues on the applicability of the LTS (Level of Traffic Stress) classification for an average Brazilian city has been highlighted.

Meanwhile, in France, one of the countries with the longest tradition of these awards, the winners will be announced tomorrow, Friday, in Paris.  

The winners in Spain, Mexico, Brazil and France join those from Italy, Chile and Puerto Rico as finalists for the Abertis Chairs International Award, which is chosen annually from among the winners from all the countries where the Abertis Chairs International Network is established.

About the International Network of Abertis Academic Chairs

Aware of the importance of working with the academic world to ensure social and economic progress, Abertis promotes training, research and knowledge transfer between University and Corporations. Through the International Network of Abertis Chairs, the generation and dissemination of new knowledge and innovations in the various fields of activity is encouraged, placing them at the service of society as a whole and the technical and educational community and caring for and helping the talent that universities are capable of bringing to the surface and channelling.

The Abertis Chairs network is made up of those established in Spain (Technical University of Madrid), France (École des Ponts-ParisTech), Puerto Rico (University of Puerto Rico), Chile (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) and Brazil (University of São Paulo). And for the past year, México, with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and Italy, with the University of Padua, have joined the network.

• Press release