From January 7 to 11, a delegation from Central South University (CSU), led by Professor Helai Huang, Dean of the School of Traffic and Transportation Engineering, Professor Jaeyoung Lee, and Professor Xiaobin Chen from the School of Civil Engineering, along with faculty and students, attended the 103rd Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) in Washington, D.C., USA. Faculty and students presented papers and posters in various sessions, fully showcasing the excellence of CSU.

To further advance the ‘Double First-Class’ initiative and implement the university’s strategy of gathering talents from home and abroad, the traffic and transportation and civil engineering disciplines jointly held a CSU Alumni and High-Level Talent Reception at the conference’s main venue (the Washington Convention Center) on January 9, which generated a strong response in the international transportation community. The schools fully utilized the TRB Annual Meeting platform to actively promote communication and mutual learning with renowned overseas universities, proactively reaching out to recruit talent, attracting over 120 scholars from China and abroad. At the reception, faculty members engaged in in-depth discussions with numerous outstanding overseas talents interested in working at the university regarding the disciplinary development of the schools and talent recruitment policies, encouraging outstanding talents from home and abroad to join CSU.

It is reported that after over a century of development, the TRB Annual Meeting has become the most prestigious, largest-scale, and most attended academic event in the international transportation research field. Through this trip to the TRB Annual Meeting, delegation members gained further insights into academic frontiers, broadened their international perspectives, and leveraged the joint reception of the traffic and civil engineering disciplines to build bridges connecting the schools with alumni and among alumni themselves. This has opened channels for the schools to attract, retain, and gather talent, further enhancing the international influence of CSU’s traffic and transportation and civil engineering disciplines.

First Review: Xiaoli Tang / Shangjun Wang  Second Review: Yuan Li  Third Review: Helai Huang