In June of 2024, the METRANS Transportation Consortium was selected to lead a United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) University Partnership Program (UPP). As a member of the UPP, METRANS partners with four Southeast Asian universities to support collaboration among United States and Southeast Asian professionals, researchers, and university students in the context of the US-ASEAN Smart Cities Partnership (USASCP) Transportation Program and the Mekong-U.S Partnership (MUSP) Regional Connectivity Program.  

 

The UPP is led by the University of Southern California, in collaboration with California State University Long Beach, Chulalongkorn University (Thailand), Institute of Technology of Cambodia, Universitas Indonesia, and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. The UPP brings a sustained research focus and METRANS’s expertise to the USASCP’s program of knowledge transfer to support smart city innovations in transportation.  

 

The UPP will use a combination of virtual and in-person educational, curriculum building, collaborative research, and knowledge exchange activities to support these goals.