ECE Professors Victor Leung and Panos Nasiopoulos’s Research Team Awarded an NSERC Grant For Smart-Car Technology

A University of Ottawa-led research network that includes three researchers from UBC, has been awarded a $5 million grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and an additional $3 million from industry partners towards a large-scale research program that will transform the way Canadians drive.

The project is called: Developing Next Generation Intelligent Vehicular Networks and Applications, or DIVA, and is comprised of several government organizations, private businesses, and universities including UBC, Carleton, Ontario Institute of Technology, Ecole Polytechnique, Queens, Alberta, and Waterloo. The goal of this project is to design network protocols and applications for vehicular ad hoc and sensor networks (VANets) that allow high-speed communication among vehicles and ground-based infrastructure, and increase driving comfort.

UBC researchers include: Dr. Garland Chow from the Sauder School of Business’ Bureau of Intelligent Transportation Systems and Freight Security (BITSAFS), ECE Professor Dr. Victor Leung, the TELUS Mobility Research Chair in Advanced Telecommunications Engineering, and ECE Professor Dr. Panos Nasiopoulos, Director of the Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems at the University of British Columbia.

These leading-edge technologies that this team will work with and develop, will significantly improve efficiency, safety, productivity and general mobility on the road, while reducing threats to travel safety and security, as well as greenhouse gas emissions. The VANets will introduce applications that will make travelling long distances more comfortable for passengers, such as location-aware services, multimedia streaming, local news, social networking, tourist information and alert messages on streets and highways.

The funding for this project is provided by NSERC’s Strategic Network Grants (SNG) Program, which aims to increase research and training in targeted areas that could strongly enhance Canada’s economy, society and/or environment within the next 10 years.

UBC researchers will focus their work on two projects as part of this major collaborative grant. The first is titled “Harnessing Vehicular Social Networks For Crowd-sensing” and the second is called “Intelligent Transportation Applications: Supporting Secure And Efficient Movements Of Freights”.