Every professor makes an impact on the students they teach and mentor. Through their service to the department or college, they can even leave a lasting mark on the university. But some professors have made significant contributions beyond academia, and their discoveries have not only improved society but changed the world for the better.
These faculty members are awarded with the UCF Medal of Societal Impact, which recognizes those who have used their research in engineering, science or medicine to benefit humankind. This year’s recipient is Professor Mohamed Abdel-Aty, a transportation safety expert and a researcher in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering. He is the second recipient of this award, which was also given to CREOL Professor Shin-Tson Wu in 2024.
“I’m grateful to my students and to UCF,” Abdel-Aty says. “It gives me great pleasure to receive this particular recognition as it means that my research has impacted society and contributed to saving and improving lives of many people at home and beyond.”
A Pioneer in Transportation and Traffic Safety
Abdel-Aty is recognized globally as a leader in the field of transportation engineering. His research focuses on traffic safety, mobility and transportation technology, and he’s pioneered a number of real-time systems to improve driver and pedestrian safety. Over the three decades he has spent at UCF, Abdel-Aty has garnered more than $32 million in research funding.
With this support, Abdel-Aty and his team in the UCF Smart and Safe Transportation (SST) Lab have developed CitySim, which is a database of vehicle trajectories collected by drones of 21 challenging highway locations. Researchers and vehicle manufacturers are using it to develop autonomous vehicles’ algorithms and safety features. More than 480 individuals from 248 institutions are now using this data. They’ve also created software that can identify traffic conflicts and detect near-miss events on roadways based on these trajectories.
“I am specifically fond of ideas that I started about 25 years ago and kept improving until in 2019, when I won a U.S. Department of Transportation national challenge and the Prince Michael International Road Safety Award,” Abdel-Aty says. “Currently a system based on these ideas is implemented in the Traffic Management Center by FDOT and emulated in several countries. The idea is simply to predict crashes five to 10 minutes before they occur using real-time traffic and weather data, and using Active Traffic Management techniques to improve the traffic conditions.”
Abdel-Aty says that research projects such as these are among his greatest achievements as they’ve not only led to the innovative implementation of transportation systems, but have also changed much of the current state-of-the-art in research and practice.
A Globally Recognized Leader and Educator
This isn’t the first time that Abdel-Aty has been recognized by UCF for his accomplishments. In 2015, he was named a Pegasus Professor and in 2017, he was appointed as a Trustee Chair. He’s also won multiple awards for his teaching, research and leadership, from both the university and the industry. His impact has not only transformed transportation systems worldwide, but has shaped the UCF Department of Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering.
As the previous department chair, Abdel-Aty developed the master’s degree in smart cities — the first of its kind in the U.S. He also implemented the Future City Initiative, which brings together an interdisciplinary group of researchers to create technologies that can benefit urban areas.
He says that what he’s enjoyed most about his 30-year career at UCF is the constructive environment that encourages research and innovation. He’s also grateful to the industry partners, such as the Florida Department of Transportation, that have supported his work, which leaves a lasting legacy on communities locally, nationally and globally.
“This is a unique award for a scholar, as it highlights how the work of a professor can have a lasting contribution to our society,” Abdel-Aty says. “In my 30 years as a professor at UCF, my work has contributed to improving transportation safety and technology. I want to be remembered as a person that dedicated his life working on finding solutions to road safety problems and developing technologies that impacted our society by improving our transportation system’s safety and efficiency.”
