Award Archives - The Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Irvine

Stephen Ritchie, Institute of Transportation Studies – Irvine (ITS-Irvine) Director and Chancellor’s Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Irvine (UCI) has been elected American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Fellow. “ASCE Fellows have made celebrated contributions and developed creative solutions that change lives around the world,” ASCE notes. “It is a prestigious honor held by 3% of ASCE members.”

Ritchie is a Life Member of ASCE and an internationally recognized educator and pioneering researcher in intelligent and sustainable transportation systems planning and engineering emphasizing the development, application and field deployment of emerging technologies and artificial intelligence techniques for traffic operations and management, and support of infrastructure investment for the nation’s freight transportation system. He is completing 20-years of service as Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCI this year, where he has led the Institute to become one of the major transportation research centers in the nation,
while also being the focal point of the highly successful transportation research and education enterprise on the UCI campus. His research, and his founding of the international journal Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, helped define and advance the scientific basis of what is now the worldwide field of Intelligent Transportation Systems. His current leadership of the Freight Mobility Living Laboratory, a near-real-time, scalable ecosystem for exploring field deployments of innovative approaches and technologies for collecting vital road and rail freight activity data, is impacting research frontiers and the state of practice in California and the nation.

Siwei Hu, a 3rd year Transportation System Engineering PhD student co-advised by Prof. Hyland and Prof. Jay, has been chosen to receive the 2022 ACSE Transportation Vision Scholarship. The award was presented at the ASCE-OC History and Heritage Night on November 3rd, 2022.

Md Rabiul Islam, PhD candidate of Transportation Science at ITS Irvine, has been selected to receive Graduate Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship Award from UCI Graduate Division. This fellowship is one of UC Irvine’s most distinguished and is intended to release the student from non-academic obligations till the completion of the degree.

Farzana Khatun, a 5th year PhD candidate of Transportation Science at ITS Irvine, has been chosen to receive the 2021 American Public Transportation Foundation (APTF) scholarship. This scholarship’s mission is to encourage students/individuals to pursue the transit field as their career. The award will be presented to the APTA’s (American Public Transportation Association) TRANSform and EXPO, November 7 – 10, 2021, in Orlando, FL. Under Professor Jean-Daniel Saphores, Farzana is working on projects that answer three crucial issues of current public transportation: 1) The impact of emerging technology and new mobility services (like Uber and Lyft) on transit ridership; 2) the effect of private car-oriented policies (like Assembly Bill 60) on transit ridership, and 3) the effect of an unprecedented situation (like the COVID19 pandemic) on transit ridership. Farzana’s research findings are informed by econometric models.

Navjyoth Sarma JS and Jiarui Tao, PhD students at ITS Irvine, have been selected to receive 2020/21 Gordon Hein scholarship from UCI Graduate Division. The Gordon Hein Scholarship provides financial support to students who demonstrate outstanding past academic achievement as well as future promise, have financial need, and are blind or legally blind.

The team formed by Rezwana Rafiq (researcher at ITS Irvine), Tanjeeb Ahmed (ITS Irvine graduate student), and Md Yusuf Sarwar Uddin (Assistant Professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City) won the 3rd place in the COVID-19 Grand Challenge hosted by C3.ai. The team will be awarded $12,500 for developing “meaningful data-driven insights that will help the global community understand and mitigate not only the spread of COVID-19, but also prepare the world to fight future pandemics, improve the medical community’s ability to respond, and help policymakers navigate decisions about COVID-19.”

Their project “Structural Modeling of COVID Spread in Relation to Human Mobility”, “models causal relationships between human mobility indicators (trips, distance traveled, staying at home, and social distancing) and COVID-19 spread to inform how policymakers should take action.”

See details here.

Youngeun Bae, a 5th year PhD candidate of Transportation System Engineering at ITS Irvine, has been selected to receive 2020/21 Henry Samueli Fellowship Award from Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Samueli School of Engineering at UC Irvine. This award is in recognition of her achievements as an outstanding Civil & Environmental Engineering graduate student who shows exceptional potential for success.

Brian Casebolt, Siwei Hu, and De’Von Jennings, PhD students of Traffic System Engineering at ITS Irvine, have been selected to receive Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation (DETI) Summer Fellowship. “DTEI Graduate Fellows will work with faculty to develop high quality remote courses for the 2020-21 academic year. Fellows will receive training from DTEI in fundamentals of pedagogy and remote learning as well as specific tools that may be useful in creating a high quality remote learning experience.”

Naila Sharmeen, a 4th year PhD candidate of Transportation Science at ITS Irvine, has been selected to receive Graduate Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship Award from UCI Graduate Division. This fellowship is one of UC Irvine’s most distinguished and is intended to release the student from non-academic obligations till the completion of the degree.

De’Von Jennings have been selected as the recipient of the ASCE LA YMF Dr. Bill Goodin Outstanding Student Mentor Scholarship and its $1000 award. He accepted the award at the Student Night Job Fair on Friday, February 7th at the Taglyan Complex.