At a ceremony on October 5, the Transportation Research Center (TRC) revealed its newly constructed, 15,240ft2 (1,416m2) conference center at its facility in East Liberty, Ohio.
Along with Ohio State University’s (OSU) College of Engineering, TRC named the building the James A Rhodes Conference Center (JARCC) in honor of the man who set the vision to build TRC during his tenure as state governor.
The new building contains a conference room that can hold 586 people and an executive conference space for up to 50 guests. The center has already welcomed its first clients.
In addition, Ohio State’s College of Engineering has teamed up with TRC to construct a distance education learning lab at the conference center. It connects to distance education classrooms on OSU’s main campus in Columbus, Ohio, including the Center for Automotive Research distance education lab.
Meanwhile, TRC’s new president and CEO, Brett Roubinek, has confirmed to ATTI that construction will be begin on the new SMART (Smart Mobility Advanced Research and Test) Center at TRC before the end of 2017.
Roubinek, who moved to his new role in August, said that final design work was being completed on the facility, which will expand the testing of advanced driver-assistance and automated systems at the proving ground (see ATTI, November 2016).
Funding to the tune of US$45m for Phase 1 of the 540-acre project was confirmed in January 2017 and will come from the State of Ohio and Ohio State University.
In a third development, construction work is well underway at the TRC site on Honda’s new US$124m aeroacoustic wind tunnel.
October 11, 2017
Written by Graham Heeps
