INSITES, a New Pitt Industry Consortium, Gains Momentum

Pitt Research has awarded the University of Pittsburgh’s INfrastructure Sensing for Intelligent Transportation and Energy Systems (INSITES) Consortium with a 2025 Momentum Funds Scaling Grant. The award supports a transdisciplinary effort to advance and implement cutting-edge sensing technology that keeps aging critical infrastructure safer. 

Pitt launched the Infrastructure Sensing Collaboration (UPISC) Workshops in 2022 to harness the collective knowledge and creative problem-solving of researchers and industry and government partners across the region. Building on the tremendous energy of these annual workshops, in June of 2025, INSITES was born. The new consortium of industry and government partners collaborates with researchers to prepare the next generation of infrastructure leaders and to transform predictive monitoring.

“With advances in machine learning, artificial intelligence, digital twin modeling, and sensing technology, we have the potential to profoundly change how we monitor aging critical infrastructure. But developing and implementing new solutions requires a sustained, collaborative, transdisciplinary approach—which is at the heart of INSITES,” said Paul Ohodnicki, RK Mellon Faculty Fellow in Energy and associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the Swanson School of Engineering. 

Each year, Pitt Research awards five types of Momentum Grants to promote innovative projects that involve transdisciplinary teams of Pitt researchers. These grants fuel exceptional research and creative projects. Scaling Grants specifically help “multi-disciplinary teams to competitively scale their research efforts in targeted pursuit of large-scale external funding.”

The transdisciplinary team leading the project includes:

• Paul Ohodnick, RK Mellon Faculty Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
• Piervincenzo Rizzo, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Zachary Harris, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
• William Harbert, ORISE Research Associate and professor of Geophysics
• Amy Babay, assistant professor in the School of Computing and Information
• Ruishu Wright, technical portfolio lead at the National Energy Technology Laboratory
• Chase Klingensmith, Civic Technology & Policy Analyst at City of Pittsburgh

With the Momentum Funds award, INSITES will pursue three overarching objectives:

1. Build and strengthen community across the Pitt campus by collaborative research.
2. Engage stakeholders to build relationships and promote external research in critical infrastructure sensing.
3. Pursue collaborative external funding among faculty and project participants with regional and national stakeholders. 

INSITES will also use the seed funding to launch three important initiatives:

1. Demonstrating critical infrastructure sensing integrated with digital twin modeling. Principal investigators will demonstrate 24/7 structural health monitoring (SHM) by using sensing and digital twin technology on one or more bridges in Pittsburgh.
2. Collaborating with the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and City of Pittsburgh to monitor areas at high risk of hazards such as landslides using acoustic and traditional sensing technology, including a linear dark fiber array.
3. Enhancing and formalizing national leadership on the topic of infrastructure sensing, leveraging relationships, collaborations, and partnerships while soliciting funding from federal agencies to support wider adoption of new sensing technology. 

“We’re honored to receive this support from Pitt Research,” Ohodnicki said. “We’re excited to usher in the next generation of sensing technology and propel what we started in 2022 at the first UPISC workshop and what has grown into INSITES.”