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The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) recently awarded grants to universities in Mississippi and Illinois to help fund research projects aimed at improving railroad safety.

Tuskegee University obtained a $96,192 grant to study the effect of fatigue on different types of rail steel, and how rail fractures develop and spread. The University of Illinois-Chicago received a $166,610 grant to create software designed to study derailments, analyze wheel/rail contact in three dimensions and examine rail-car dynamics under high speeds.

The grants support the FRA’s National Rail Safety Action Plan, which targets the most frequent, highest-risk accident causes. Track-related accidents are the second leading cause of all train accidents.

“Early detection is critical to the prevention of track-caused train accidents,” said FRA Administrator Joseph Boardman in a prepared statement.