Stevanovic receives Fulbright Specialist Program award

Aleksandar Stevanovic, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering in Pitt's Swanson School of Engineering, has received a Fulbright Specialist Program award from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

Stevanovic will complete a project at the University of Kragujevac in Serbia that aims to exchange knowledge and establish partnerships through a variety of educational and training activities within civil engineering and urban planning.

He is one of more than 400 U.S. citizens who are selected for the Fulbright Specialist Program each year, based on academic and professional achievement, demonstrated leadership in their field, and their potential to foster long-term cooperation between institutions in the U.S. and abroad.

Stevanovic is also principal investigator of the Swanson School's Pittsburgh Intelligent Transportation Systems Lab, which investigates transportation problems and develops solutions to preserve a city's livability.

"This Fulbright project will help us to assess what can be done to help cities and countries with low level of penetration of Intelligent Transportation Systems to reduce fossil fuel consumption, carbon footprint, and harmful emissions caused by traffic in congested urban networks," Stevanovic said. "While many solutions can be found in multimodal policies and operations, with this project we intend to optimize traffic signal control with outdated technology through a comprehensive and careful analysis of urban traffic flows, to achieve benefits without significant infrastructural investments."

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to build lasting connections between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The Fulbright Program is funded through an annual appropriation made by Congress to the State Department.