Areas: TAPED

ASPIRE is founded on a comprehensive research program with convergence and deep integration across disciplines through five Research Areas:  Transportation, Adoption, Power, Equity, and Data (TAPED). 

The TAPED Research Areas are tightly coupled with immersive programs and longitudinal research in Engineering Workforce Development, Diversity and Culture of Inclusion, and Innovation. With seamless integration of wireless and wired charging, ASPIRE targets an integrated systems-of-systems approach to co-optimize transportation and electric utility systems and end-user experience and productivity.

This approach occurs at the nexus of electrical-mechanical-thermal design of vehicles, charging systems, pavements, power systems, data fusion, and dynamic optimization of networked and co-dependent systems, and econometrics, policy, user acceptance, and environmental and societal impacts.

New fundamental insights will be gained in methods and materials to integrate charging infrastructure into long-life pavements. New data science innovations in solving large-scale, nonlinear, nonconvex, and NP-hard problems in offline and real-time settings integrated across the electric grid and transportation systems will have game changing impact on systems design and optimization.

New economic, behavioral, and social science models and frameworks will be developed to allow the team to break out of conventional thinking when considering the societal, policy, consumer, and market perspectives of and integration with technology elements.

The ERC’s holistic and convergent research approach through the TAPED Research Areas is unique globally and critical to advancing and sustaining the envisioned equitable transformations across the transportation and electric utility industries.