By Kyle Shelton, CTS director
In December 2024, CTS was delighted to host Professor Waressara Weerawat of Thailand’s Mahidol University for a visit to the Twin Cities. Weerawat is a University of Minnesota alum, having received her PhD in industrial and systems engineering in 2003. Since then, she’s built a strong career as a professor in Mahidol’s Department of Industrial Engineering, conducting supply chain and railway research.
In 2018, Professor Weerawat and colleagues from across the Mahidol School of Engineering established the Cluster of Logistics and Rail Engineering, encompassing multiple graduate programs. In preparation for launching a new PhD program under the cluster, Weerawat has been establishing connections and learning from partners around the globe—in England, Germany, and now, Minnesota.
During Weerawat’s three-day Twin Cities tour, we visited multiple rail and freight partners, connected with U of M faculty and staff, and discussed a range of ways in which our universities might collaborate. One of Professor Weerawat’s main goals was to learn more about how US government agencies at every level make planning and investment decisions in rail transit and freight. To that end, she and I talked with leaders from the Metropolitan Council, Metro Transit (while also visiting the light-rail operations yard), and the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s Freight Office. We also toured the Saint Paul Port Authority.
On the University side, Weerawat connected with colleagues from her former department as well as researchers from the Departments of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics and Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering. She visited with CTS’s Eric Lind to learn more about the Accessibility Observatory, a leading resource for research and application of accessibility-based transportation system evaluation. And in true transportation research fashion, Weerawat even scored an impromptu introduction to a transportation professor on the Metro Green Line while traveling to campus one day.
CTS hopes to continue exploring collaborative opportunities with Professor Weerawat and Mahidol University to enrich student experiences, strengthen research, and engage in peer learning.
