Manuel Martin Ramos is pursuing his Masters degree within the RailTEC group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is interested in freight rail transportation, system optimization, risk analysis and mitigation, the application of GIS for transportation and high-speed rail. In addition, his research as a Graduate Research Assistant at UIUC focuses on hazardous material transportation risk analysis and accident consequence modelling. Manuel hopes to design passenger rail or high-speed rail systems later in his career.