Benjamin Seibold: Traffic Waves, Vehicle Automation, and the Future of Traffic Modeling

Dr. Benjamin Seibold of Temple University spoke to MSRI’s Math Lovers Forum in February 2021. This event was hosted by Naren & Vinita Gupta, Ashok & Gita Vaish, and David Eisenbud.

Traffic Waves, Vehicle Automation, and the Future of Traffic Modeling

Vehicular traffic flow exhibits highly intriguing structural beauty (if one is not the one stuck in traffic): phantom traffic jams arise from dynamic instabilities; and traffic waves are mathematical analogs of detonation waves. We show how traffic models can expose these structures, and then present how existing vehicle automation can substantially reshape how traffic flows on our roadways.

Math Lovers Forum at MSRI: Benjamin Seibold on “Traffic Waves, Vehicle Automation, and the Future of Traffic Modeling” from MSRI on Vimeo.

Presenter Biography

Benjamin SeiboldBenjamin Seibold is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Temple University, and the Director of the Center for Computational Mathematics and Modeling. His research combines mathematical analysis, computation and simulation, and experiments to answer questions about many real-world phenomena, including traffic flow, autonomous vehicles, fluid flows, radiation transport, and invasive species.