Carnegie Mellon University announced this afternoon it has received a $14 million federal grant to establish a new National University Transportation Center.

The grant will be released over five years through the federal Department of Transportation to set up a program known as Mobility21. It will be a partnership between the College of Engineering and the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy to develop innovations in smart transportation and smart city research and education.

The program will be headed by Raj Rajkumar, the the George Westinghouse Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Robotics who also does research on self-driving vehicles as co-director of the General Motors Connected and Autonomous Driving Collaborative Research Laboratory.

In a news release, the university said the College of Engineering will work with partners such as the Community College of Allegheny County, University of Pennsylvania and Ohio State University. The group will work to develop smart city technologies; connected and autonomous vehicles; improved transportation access to disadvantaged neighborhoods; multi-modal traveling; assistive technologies for people with disabilities; data modeling for monitoring traffic control systems; and regional planning to establish priorities and aid transportation deployment.

First Published: December 5, 2016, 10:31 p.m.