Name: Krishna Kumar Selvam Applying for: M.S./Ph.D.

in Transportation Engineering

Statement of Objectives

Having topped my class in maths and science for most of my school education, the
transition to engineering was a natural one. It is also an obvious goal of every engineering
aspirant in India to study at the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology, where less than
1% of applicants are admitted through an examination that is arguably the toughest in the
world.

Owing to my hard work and sustained perseverance for two years, I was one of the
lucky few who could join one of the seven Indian Institutes of Technology. Having joined the
civil engineering department for a dual degree programme with a specialization in
infrastructure, I was particularly attracted to transportation engineering because of the
interdisciplinary nature of the subject – and especially because I could learn and use the
subjects I was really interested in – computer science, statistics, and graph theory and
operations management.

It all began with an introductory course in Transportation Engineering, in which I

learnt the basic concepts of traffic flow and signal design. The analytical nature of this course
and transportation engineering in general would further add to my motivation to take up
almost every course in traffic engineering and related subjects being offered at IIT Madras.
The course on Transportation Network Analysis was, however, the inspiration behind me
taking up serious research in this field. As we learnt and understood the ingenuous thinking
behind the different algorithms used in network theory, I realized that this was the most
interesting subject I had ever studied. As a part of the course, I worked on pruning methods to
improve the computation speed of Djikstra’s algorithm, and added machine learning
capability after which the algorithm performed better over time. It gave amazing results,
reducing computation time by a factor of 3, but more importantly, it magnified by many
times my appetite for research in transportation engineering.

I then worked on a video image processing algorithm that is being developed at IIT
Madras by Dr. Gitakrishnan. I came up with an approximate algorithm that greatly improved
the computation speed of comparing two different frames – this performed as well as the
inbuilt function for computing the earth mover’s distance in openCV (an open source
package for image processing), while at the same time was 2-3 times faster.

The course Computer Applications in Transportation Engineering exposed me to

different commercial software used in transportation engineering. While learning to use these
ready-made packages, I was constantly intrigued by how they functioned and how they could
be improved. And I was, in fact able to satisfy this curiosity to an extent. I came up with a
very realistic event based micro-simulation model for dynamic traffic assignment which
could serve as a base on which complex models of route choice and queuing could be applied
– and the best part was that the inspiration for this came from a course that I had taken as part
of my minor stream in Industrial engineering – I truly realized how interdisciplinary
transportation engineering can be.

Primed with all this knowledge, as a research assistant under Dr Karthik K Srinivasan,
I have begun working on real time processing of GPS data, streaming in from public transit
vehicles being used on probes. This will be used as the primary data source for the Variable
Message Signs that are going to be put up in Chennai city, for the first time in India. I have
developed a map matching algorithm that is capable of processing data in real time, and this
information will be used in a time dependent shortest path algorithm to predict travel times
for users. The same work will also form the base for a web based travel planner.

In between working on these projects, I have also sharpened my programming skills

by working on a Virtual Laboratory, where I developed modules for automated modelling
and structural testing of different specimens that are generally tested in laboratories. The
Virtual Laboratory, an online platform that simulates a structural laboratory, would greatly
enhance the learning experience for undergraduates. The courses on transportation economics
and analytical techniques in transportation also broadened the scope of my knowledge in
transportation engineering.

During my final-year internship at ICRA Management Consulting Services, I worked

on comparing the transportation infrastructure facilities of different cities across India and the
world using Data Envelopment Analysis, which gave weightage to the GDP among other
economic aspects to judge the performance of the city corporation in rendering services to its
citizens. It was a rude shock when the numbers suggested that even the best Indian city is not
half as good as some of the European ones – and all the more reason to take up a meaningful
career in transportation engineering.
 While it has been satisfying to work with some of the best in transportation at IIT
Madras, and to have made use of the newly set up Intelligent Transportation Systems
laboratory, this field is still in its nascent stage in India as a country – and at such a young
stage in my career, I would very much like to work in a university renowned for its research
in this field, in a place where I can garner as much of experience as possible while at the
same time try and contribute to the research being done there. I hope to finally come back to
India as a faculty member in one of the IITs and be an addition to the small but rapidly
growing research group in India. Needless to say, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
has contributed immensely to transportation engineering, and is unmatched in the quality of
the graduate programs it offers. The work being done by Dr. Yossi Sheffi, Dr. David Simchi-
Levi and Dr. Carolina Osorio matches well with my research interests, and I would be
grateful if I am given the opportunity to work under their guidance.

I believe that I have the necessary skills, desire and experience to launch my career at
undoubtedly the best place to do so in the world. It would indeed, be an honour to be a part of
the research group at the Transportation and Operations Research division at MIT.