Pipeline Safety Research Competitive Academic Agreement Program (CAAP)

The CAAP initiative is intended to spur innovation by enabling an academic research focus on high-risk and high pay-off solutions for the many pipeline safety challenges. It will potentially deliver solutions that can be “hand-offs” to PHMSA’s core research program of demonstration and deployment. The goal would be to validate proof of concept of a thesis or theory all the way to commercial introduction into the market. Further, the pipeline industry and federal/state regulators are experiencing low numbers of applicants to entry level positions that are technically focused. As such, another goal of the CAAP program is to expose graduate and PhD research students to subject matter that is common to pipeline safety challenges and to illustrate how their engineering or technical disciplines are highly needed in the field. The ultimate benefit would be to cultivate new talent in all aspects of pipelines, similar to how programs at other Federal Agencies and non-profit organizations have encouraged talent to consider a career in a certain field.