• This year’s winning doctoral thesis for the 5th Abertis International Research Award in Transportation, presented by the International Network of the Abertis Chair on Transportation Infrastructure Management and Road Safety, was written by Dr Carlos Llorca from the Universitat Politècnica de Valencia for his paper “An analysis of overtaking on main roads and a model proposal for design and signposting improvements” (Ex aequo) and, the other by Dr Cristina Torres from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, under the title of “Multi-objective Optimisation of Heuristics for Inland Transport Infrastructure Assets Management” (Ex aequo).
• In the Master’s degree theses category, the award has gone to Meritxell Pacheco from UPC BarcelonaTech, under the title of “Traffic parameters estimation from the analysis of connected car data”.

Doctoral thesis “An analysis of overtaking on main roads and a model proposal for design and signposting improvements” (Ex aequo) by Dr Carlos Llorca and “Multi-objective Optimisation of Heuristics for Inland Transport Infrastructure Assets Management” (Ex aequo) by Dr Cristina Torres have won the 5th Abertis International Research Award in Transportation awarded by the International Network of the Abertis Chair on Transportation Infrastructure Management and Road Safety. This award, which has a prize fund of 10,000 Euros, recognises the best doctoral thesis across all the winners of national awards from each Chair (Brazil, Chile, Spain, France and Puerto Rico).

In the Master’s degree theses or final paper category, the award has gone to “Traffic parameters estimation from the analysis of connected car data”, by Meritxell Pacheco from UPC BarcelonaTech. The winner has received 4,000 Euros in prize money.

Present at the awards ceremony celebrated today in Santiago at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, were the Ministers for Transport and Public Works, Andrés Gómez-Lobo and Alberto Undurraga, respectively, the Spanish Ambassador for Chile, Carlos Robles, the CEO of Abertis Motorways Chile, Luis Miguel de Pablo, and the Director of the Abertis Chair – PUC (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), Juan de Dios Ortúzar.
The International Abertis Chairs Network is the first university think tank which aims to promote road safety across higher education curricula, developed alongside public and private stakeholders. This is one further step towards Abertis’s major commitment to Road Safety, who recently joined the innovative international coalition Together for Safer Roads (TSR). Abertis is also a member of IRF (International Road Safety) and ERF (European Road Safety).

Abertis Chair

Since 2003, Abertis and the Abertis Foundation have been promoting the creation of different chairs in collaboration with prestigious national and international universities and academic institutions. Aware of the importance of links with the academic community for social and economic progress, Abertis has promoted training, research and knowledge transfer between universities and companies.

The first Chair was established in Spain alongside the Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTec, directed by Francesc Robusté and subsequently, the following Chairs were added: France (IFSTTAR École des Ponts) directed by Simon Cohen; Puerto Rico, (University of Puerto Rico) led by Benjamín Colucci; Chile (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), with Juan de Dios Ortúzar as the head; and, more recently, Brazil (Universidad de Sao Paulo) under the guidance of Leidi Bernucci.