
Carol Flannagan, UMTRI Research Professor and CMISST Group Head at UMTRI has been selected to receive the Kenneth M. Reese Outstanding Research Scientist Award for 2022-2023. Recipients of this award will receive a monetary award and will be honored at a dinner this semester.
Flannagan has over 25 years of experience conducting data analysis and addressing research questions related to transportation and mobility. She develops analytical methods for and analyzes a wide variety of transportation-related data, including travel, driving, crash, traffic, and injury outcome data. Her work includes development of algorithms to recognize high-level behaviors in videos, algorithms to detect when a crash is likely to cause injury (and alert EMS), and assessments of safety benefits of advanced vehicle technologies. Dr. Flannagan’s methods work includes, for example, efficient design of experiments, incorporation of machine-learning methods into transportation data analysis and survey sample design. She has recent and current NHTSA-funded projects estimating field safety benefits of a number of different ADAS systems and developing and piloting an on-road test procedure for Highly Automated Vehicles (HAVs). Dr. Flannagan’s research has been sponsored by Federal agencies including FHWA, NHTSA and FMCSA, state agencies, including the Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning and the Michigan Department of Transportation, vehicle manufacturers including General Motors and Ford, the insurance industry, and the National Science Foundation (NSF), among others.
Flannagan earned a BA in Psychology at St. Lawrence University, a MA in Mathematical and Experimental Psychology from the U-M, a MA in Applied Statistics from the U-M and a PhD in Mathematical and Experimental Psychology from the U-M.