NUTC Hosts Fall 2025 Workshop Spotlighting Practical Autonomous Transportation

Industry leaders and researchers discussed how emerging autonomous technologies are being applied

On Nov. 5, the Northwestern University Transportation Center (NUTC) hosted the Fall 2025 Industry Technical Workshop. The event, “Autonomous Transportation Services Take the Road,” convened leading practitioners in autonomous transportation for a focused workshop designed to bridge cutting-edge research with frontline industry deployment. 

The session brought together companies operating autonomous vehicles, autonomous trucking technologies, and emerging autonomous rail systems—each already active in practical environments.

Bret Johnson, interim director of the NUTC, said one of the center’s primary goals is ensuring researchers—especially emerging scholars—have visibility into actual technological deployment. The industry seminars play a prominent role in that mission.

“We just want to be able to get closer to some of these companies and understand what’s going on with real-world applications,” he said. “Having some insight into real-world applications helps both the faculty and the students add context and perspective to the research work they’re doing.”

The presenters at this event were Tom Baroch, the senior director of strategic partnerships at Waabi; Jay Campbell, Uber’s head of product for autonomous mobility and delivery; CJ King, chief technology officer at Torc Robotics; and Harry Zander, chief operations officer at Intramotev. A panel discussion was moderated by Alireza Talebpour, an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Grainger College of Engineering.

NUTC’s approach to industry engagement has deep roots. Johnson credited the late Professor Hani Mahmassani—who directed NUTC for almost 20 years until his passing in July—with pushing the center to bring industry operators directly to campus long before autonomous transportation became a national focus.

“He wanted to bring people from industry to campus who were already doing, or maybe planning on doing, the technology or topic that we were working on,” Johnson said.

Johnson said the center continues to view these workshops as a crucial mechanism for building reciprocal relationships: industry gaining insight into university research capabilities, and researchers gaining exposure to active deployment challenges shaping the near-term future.

“That continuous loop of information creates interest in the student, drives new research ideas for faculty, and helps companies find someone who can help solve a problem they haven’t solved yet,” Johnson said.

He added that various stakeholder groups, including the local transportation community, members of NUTC’s Business Advisory Council, and researchers across disciplines, benefit from early visibility into emerging technologies.

“Whether it’s six months from now, two years from now, or maybe five years from now, they want to know what’s impacting their field,” Johnson said.

When asked whether the workshop revealed overarching lessons that attendees might carry forward, Johnson pointed to a consistent theme: successful deployment depends on identifying real problems and matching them with technologies capable of solving them.

“They’ve identified a market opportunity,” he said. “They’re applying and integrating various technologies to make it happen.”