Transportation agencies compete with more resourceful technology and start-up companies to recruit and/or employ workforce that are well-versed in emerging topics such as autonomous systems, sensors, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. In addition, transportation agencies are mostly not in the job search radar of the workforce from fields such as computer science and electrical engineering who happen to possess the sought-after skills. Thus, it is important to 1) understand how to recruit and retain skilled workforce, 2) educate students from fields that DOTs traditionally recruit from (e.g., civil engineering, planning) with necessary skills and 3) train the existing workforce not to fall back in the technological advancement trend. The transformative potential of research can only be realized if the gap between the state-of-the-art and the state-of-the-practice is reduced. In the mid- to long-term, this can be achieved most effectively by educating the future generation of researchers and practitioners who embrace the same principles that lead to an accessible and multimodal transportation system. In the shorter term, the training and education programs for the existing workforce can start bridging the gap between research and practice. This project is the first installment of envisioned R-SEAT Center projects that aims to fill this gap. In particular, this project will document the sought-after skills by DOTs by analyzing the job ads (obtained via DOTs directly or through job ad sites) with text mining tools to extract the common skills and qualifications. Accordingly, a survey for transportation professionals will developed to inquire their perspective on necessary skills.
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