The third annual meeting for the National University Rail Center of Excellence (NURail CoE) was held on Tuesday 26 May 2026 at the iHotel and Conference Center on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. Over 40 representatives from eight of the nine consortium members attended the meeting in person while additional participants attended remotely.
Attendees took the time to review accomplishments from year two, received an update from each of the CoE Principal Investigators including highlights from the prior year and plans for next year, and finalized plans for the NURail CoE booth at the AREMA annual conference in Kansas City in September. The NURail CoE meeting was held in conjunction with the inaugural INNOVARail 2026 conference, a new multidisciplinary conference dedicated to rail research, technology, and development. The INNOVARail conference was held on 26-28 May and the theme was “Translating Innovation into Practice”. There were 33 NURail CoE presentations given at the conference.