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The Association of American Railroads (AAR) recently selected Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University's (Virginia Tech) College of Engineering to host an affiliated research laboratory.

AAR will provide the college an annual grant of $200,000 to establish a "Railway Technologies Laboratory." Research projects conducted at the college will be selected and monitored by AAR's Transportation Technology Center Inc.

"This relationship will forge closer ties and research collaborations between the university and the railroad industry, opening up new funding opportunities from private and government sources," said Mehdi Ahmadian, a professor of mechanical engineering — who will serve as the lab's director — in a prepared statement.

AAR also supports affiliated labs at the University of Texas A&M and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Virginia Tech competed for the lab against such schools as Pennsylvania State University and the University of California-Berkeley.

Virginia Tech already conducts research in wireless communications, sensor technology, rail vehicle dynamics simulation and modeling, and technologies aimed at improving railroad operations, safety and security.