Rhonda Young: Academy of Distinguished Engineers - 2024

Rhonda Young’s career in transportation has been deeply rooted in public safety.

“I’ve long been aware of the profound impact that vehicle collisions can have on people,” she said. “Both the research and teaching aspects of my career have been driven by the belief that we can and should be doing more to reduce the human cost of our transportation system.”

Of her many accomplishments, Young takes particular pride in her work with variable speed limit control algorithms to reduce the number of crashes on rural interstate highways. Working with transportation agencies, she helped to develop and deploy the technology, which has resulted in significantly fewer collisions, particularly during inclement weather.

After receiving her bachelor’s degree from Oregon State, Young, a first-generation college student, earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in civil engineering at the University of Washington. She served as a transportation design consultant for 10 years. Then, in 2002, she joined the ranks of academia, where she has derived a deep satisfaction from mentoring and guiding hundreds of students.

“On my office wall, I have a mural of dandelion seeds taking flight, as well as notes from former students.

It’s a way of reminding me of the responsibility to educate a workforce that will go out and make a difference in the world,” she said. “Our society faces tremendous challenges, and engineers are desperately needed to address them. I strongly believe that we need to empower these future engineers with the technical skills to solve them.”

Young calls her time at Oregon State transformational. The College of Engineering, she says, provided her not only with the opportunity to develop formidable technical skills; it also helped her to develop the intellectual confidence to continue pursuing new knowledge.

“The college offers world-class engineering education and still remains rooted in its community,” Young said. “It’s taking on major challenges in the world without losing sight of who it is trying to serve. The outstanding education and support I received there opened up a future that I hadn’t imagined possible, and the strong connections that I built with classmates and faculty have lasted to this day.”