The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) has been selected as a finalist in the 2026 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV) Student Competition. The regional North American finals take place this month, with the winners advancing to the international finals on May 12-15, 2026, at the 28th ESV Conference in Toronto, Canada, to present against eight other teams from across the globe.

Each student team submits a project that outlines a proposed safety technology design solution to address a global vehicle safety research priority. Entries are judged within three geographic regions: North America, Asia-Pacific and Europe. In the North American finals, UAH is facing off against leading institutions in vehicle safety research, including the University of California, Merced; Oregon State University; The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

The squads develop models or mockups of their new safety systems, and regional judges evaluate the submitted abstracts, with the top nine teams selected to present at ESV in Toronto. Each abstract submitted will feature how adoption of such a device or system could reduce the number of crashes, mitigate injuries and/or prevent fatalities if deployed in vehicles and integrated into real-world operation.

An international panel of vehicle safety experts will then select one first-place team and one runner-up, both of which will receive an award and international recognition for their achievements. The NHTSA is a part of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The UAH team is advised by Dr. Henrick Haule, assistant professor of transportation engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE). Team members include Alexander MacGregor, a CEE undergraduate, as well as Lorain Salufu, Sidnie Ross and Maria Lubida, all CEE graduate students. In addition, Salufu was recently selected to participate in the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) International Pitch Competition, while MacGregor gained hands-on experience through the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (RCEU) program working with the Alabama Department of Transportation’s North Region Traffic Management Center.

“Our students are at the forefront of the rapid technological shifts within the transportation sector,” Haule says. “Their participation in such competitions highlights the growing role of UAH in transportation research and underscores our students’ involvement in solving existing and future challenges in the transportation system. The competition also offers students a unique opportunity to engage with industry leaders and their peers to enhance traffic safety and mobility, which is a critical part of their preparation for becoming engineers.”

Haule also heads the UAH Traffic Lab, which is rapidly expanding its research footprint in transportation systems, safety and intelligent mobility. The UAH Traffic Lab supports student-led research in areas including traffic incident management, traffic safety, travel demand modeling, public transit and intelligent transportation systems. Four students are actively engaged in funded research projects, working with state and national partners to address complex transportation challenges.

Recent and ongoing funded projects in the lab include research on enhancing Traffic Incident Management with Large Language Models and Real-Time Multi-Source Data (June 2025 – July 2026, $10,000); Alabama Department of Transportation modeling support for metropolitan planning organizations within the state (Oct. 2024 – Sept. 2025, $50,000) and Alabama Transportation Institute support to evaluate the impact of a business access and transit (BAT) lanes bus rapid transit on corridor traffic operations (Jan. 2025 – Jan. 2026, $100,000).