CETL 101: What Is CETL and How Can I Get Involved?
The second installment of the Seminar Series, an initiative from the Center of Excellence in Transportation and Logistics (CETL) intended to spark conversation and deepen knowledge about the transportation and logistics (T&L) sector within the academic and industrial community, took place on September 29th, 2026. The second installment was centered around explaining the mission and purpose of the CETL, the importance of the T&L sector in Puerto Rico, and how students can become directly involved in the CETL and T&L sector. Attendees were able to get a view of graduate student Wendy Pulido’s project “Puerto Rico Freight Data Observatory”, an innovative project with great implications for the further development of the T&L sector in Puerto Rico. Finally, this Seminar Series fell on an important date for the CETL, its first-year anniversary!
This celebratory Seminar Series was a total success, pulling an audience of [insert info about seminar stats] attendees.
The seminar started off with a presentation from CETL graduate student Rosa M. Laureano Marrero titled “Estudia lo que quieras y enfócalo en transportación y logística” (“Study what you want and focus it on transportation and logistics”), an important motto for CETL’s mission. The presentation focused on the importance of transportation and logistics (T&L) within Puerto Rico and the CETL’s role in the development of courses focused on T&L across different disciplines.
The presentation emphasized the three pillars of CETL: talent, innovation, and industry hub. CETL has led the way for the development of talent within transportation and logistics by developing around 49 courses focused on T&L in business administration, civil engineering, and industrial engineering.
As part of its mission of innovating within the T&L sector, the CETL focuses on four main areas of research: resilience before disasters, supply chain, transportation, and logistics 4.0. These research areas count with support from professors from 6 different departments, industrial engineering, civil engineering, computer & software engineering, electrical & computer engineering, business administration and economics.
The presentation highlighted the real direct impact to Puerto Rico’s T&L sector and industry caused by the CETL’s initiatives. Just within the first year, the CETL counts with the support of approximately 50 corporations and entities. With these alliances, students have been able to enrich their studies and work on real-life scenarios presented by companies. For example, civil engineering students were able to apply their knowledge to optimize night-time delivery routes and create a proposal for improvements using data provided by a pizza company, meanwhile industrial engineering students were able to apply their knowledge of optimization to help a fast-food distributor reduce the cost of managing containers.
Following that presentation we got a deeper look into CETL-supported graduate student Wendy Pulido’s research project “Puerto Rico Freight Data Observatory”.
By collecting publicly available data, Pulido aims at reconstructing the missing information that is critical for the decision-making process and continued development of Puerto Rico’s industrial sector. The information is reconstructed through a model that takes the data and processes it in three stages: Generation, Distribution, and Assignment. The Data Observatory starts off identifying where providers and clients are located to determine how much cargo is imported and exported by each municipality. In its second stage it determines between which entities the cargo was transported. The final stage seeks to answer the question of which streets the cargo should pass through.
The end of this successful seminar included a celebration for the CETL’s one year anniversary since its inauguration. The CETL looks back on a successful year and is excited to see what the future holds for transportation and logistics.
True to CETL’s mission of developing talent from within, the series was organized entirely by Zarah N. Martinez, a second-year Industrial Engineering student who was recruited from the CETL Talent Bank. The CETL Talent Bank is a repository where students can share their skills with partner companies looking for talent and become directly involved with the work taking place within the CETL. Taking on this initiative gave the students hands-on experience planning and running a professional event from the ground up. Zarah is setting the example for future volunteers, proving that age and experience are no match for initiative and drive.
The CETL will be having the next installment in its Seminar Series on October 20th, 2026. This next seminar, titled “Innovative Solutions for a Smarter Future”, will include the participation of industry guest 2LT Diego Nater and CETL-backed researcher Carlos Álvarez. The seminar seeks to explore the topics of military logistics, air assault operations, ride-sharing and smart parking alongside their role in addressing transportation challenges.
