Conestoga Students Win PennDOT Innovations Regional Challenge

TREDYFFRIN-EASTTOWN, PA — A team of students from the Tredyffrin/Easttown School District has been named the winner of PennDOT's Innovations Challenge in the Philadelphia region and has a chance to win $6,000.

The PennDOT Innovations Challenge is a statewide competition for high school students, encouraging them to develop innovative and strategic solutions to real-world transportation challenges.

Karen Mull mentors the Conestoga High School team, which includes students Prranit Arora, Miya Cao, and Daniel Loza.

The PennDOT Innovations Challenge is a statewide competition for high school students around the Commonwealth to develop creative and strategic solutions to real-world transportation challenges. It reflects the Shapiro Administration’s goal of growing the Pennsylvania state workforce by introducing students to the real issues being addressed by the department and allowing them to explore a career in state government.

For this year’s challenge, students were asked to develop a concept for the use of artificial intelligence in work zones to dramatically improve safety for work crews and road users.

The Conestoga team's innovative idea uses AI to rank safe and unsafe windows of time in which to work on roads. Their SafeWindow Scheduling System assesses conditions such as weather, weekday, time, and roadway classification, with the potential to input more conditions to determine safe and unsafe windows of time for work zone activity.

The team and other regional winners will be invited to present their solutions to PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll and a panel of judges in April, when a statewide winner will be determined.

In recent years, more than 1,200 work zone crashes have occurred annually on Pennsylvania’s roadways. PennDOT is committed to continuously improving roadway safety for our PennDOT employees and drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians. PennDOT regularly conducts research into the most effective personal protection equipment (PPE) as well as strategically using signage, social media, and other technology to inform roadway users of local work zones.

"Each year, I have the honor of meeting some of the brightest young minds in the Commonwealth who present their solutions for the issues we face every day in transportation. It’s rare that we have the opportunity to explore such new technology with a fresh set of eyes," Carroll said. "Safety is the most critical aspect of maintenance and construction, and I know we’re going to see some truly unique solutions put forward by this year’s teams."

"Safety is PennDOT's top priority, and the finalist teams from District 6 presented innovative ideas to use the latest technology to keep everyone on the road safe," said PennDOT District 6 Executive Din Abazi. "We were impressed with the students’ creative ideas to apply AI to work zone safety and look forward to Pennsylvania’s future engineers setting the standards for safety initiatives.

For this year’s challenge, the Transportation Policy and Education Foundation, an educational arm of the Associated Pennsylvania Constructors organization, the American Council of Engineering Companies of PA, the Mid-Atlantic Section of the Institute of Transportation Engineers, and the Intelligent Transportation Society of Pennsylvania are awarding the statewide winning team a combined total of $6,000.