The School of Civil and Environmental Engineering's Transportation Engineering program is pleased to announce that four of its graduate students have been awarded 2010 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships. J.P. O'Har, Brittany Luken, Donny Katz and Brent Weigel are among the 2000 national awardees recently published by NSF. In addition, Josie Kressner and Tom Wall received Honorable Mentions.
NSF Graduate Research Fellowships provides three years of support for graduate study leading to research-based master's or doctoral degrees and are intended for students who are in the early stages of their graduate study. The Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) invests in graduate education for a cadre of diverse individuals who demonstrate their potential to successfully complete graduate degree programs in disciplines relevant to the mission of NSF.
Dr. Michael Meyer, Frederick R. Dickerson Chair and Director of the Georgia Transportation Institute said, "In the collective memory of the transportation faculty, we cannot recall where one transportation program has received this many NSF Fellowships in one year. This is truly unprecedented". It speaks very highly of the caliber of students enrolled and the commitment and expertise of the transportation faculty.
CEE congratulates these individuals on their outstanding achievement. The School also thanks the faculty who wrote letters of recommendation, and Dr. Lisa Rosenstein who worked with the students on their research statements. Listed below, you will find a brief bio and research overview for each of the award winners:
John Patrick ("J.P.") O'Har
He is a doctoral candidate currently working with Drs. Amekudzi and Meyer on the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) project "Best Practices in Selecting Performance Measures and Standards for Effective Asset Management". As part of this project, J.P. is developed an inventory of tools and databases at GDOT that could be used in an asset management system. His next step will include developing a risk-oriented asset management system for GDOT and developing a means of data visualization for GDOT's assets. J.P.'s current research interests include transportation asset management and climate change. He was a co-author, along with Dr. Amekudzi and Dr. Meyer, of a paper entitled "Transportation Asset Management Systems and Climate Change: An Adaptive Systems Management Approach" that was recently accepted for publication in the Transportation Research Record, the Journal of the Transportation Research Board (TRB). His proposed research for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship includes developing a risk appraisal framework for vulnerable (to the impacts of climate change) transportation infrastructure assets that uses existing transportation asset management systems in order to provide a strategic platform for climate change-related investment decision-making.
Brittany Luken
She is a Ph.D. candidate under the guidance of Dr. Laurie Garrow. Brittany's research efforts are focused on investigating how online airline pricing and seat map information can be used to develop multi-airport choice models. In addition to the NSF Fellowship, Brittany is the recipient of a $10,000 Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Graduate Research Fellowship, for which she is currently completing a paper analyzing airport catchment areas, and the recipient of a Georgia Department of Transportation and Gordon W. Schultz Graduate Fellowship. Outside of her research, Brittany is avidly involved in educational outreach. Last summer, she developed activities to introduce 7th and 8th grade girls to Transportation Engineering during the Technology Engineering and Computing Girl's Camp. She participated in Scout Day at the Fernbank Museum, where she taught elementary age Boy and Girl Scouts about science. Finally, Brittany also mentored an undergraduate student for the Fall 2009 semester and helped her develop an interdisciplinary airport simulation project.
Donald Katz
He began his graduate education at Georgia Tech in August 2009. Advised by Dr. Michael Meyer and Dr. Laurie Garrow, he is researching air traffic passenger and freight movements as they relate to megaregions. Specifically, he is examining the role airports play in these cross-border agglomerations of metropolitan areas, and how this role can be strengthened in the future. Flows within, between, and outside of megaregion hub cities will be compared to available airport capacity, and evaluated by the megaregion's attributes. He earned a BSCE in civil engineering from North Carolina State University and was a student in the Park Scholarships program. After graduation, he spent one year in Dhaka, Bangladesh as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar, studying overcrowded buses in affiliation with the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology. For his research, he endured over 500 hours of hot cramped bus rides, in seats a bit too small for his height, to gather the necessary data and gain a better understanding of the role buses play in Dhaka's challenging traffic situation. After his return to the U.S., Donald spent several months studying high-speed rail options for the Northeast Corridor with America 2050 at the Regional Plan Association in New York City. Subsequently, he researched an evaluation of new highway work zone pavement markings and a study on the effects that access management techniques have on local businesses at the Institute for Transportation Research and Education at N.C. State. In addition, Donald continues with his study of bus operations in Dhaka, using statistical models to find the relationships between bus and stop characteristics and overcrowded performance.
Brent Weigel
He is a second year PhD student with professional experience in the freight railroading and architecture/engineering industries, working in locomotive design and field operations at Norfolk Southern Corp., and in facility design and LEED® project coordination at AECOM. As an advocate for accommodation of bicyclists and pedestrians, Brent co-founded the Roanoke Valley Chapter of BikeWalk Virginia. Brent is working with CEE faculty, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, and the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance as a graduate research assistant to develop a Transit Greenhouse Gas Emissions Management Compendium, which will help transit agencies reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption. For his doctoral research, Brent is developing a life cycle analysis framework of transportation and building-related greenhouse gas emissions from building site alternatives, which will enable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from the built environment. Brent's research interests include transportation-related climate change mitigation and adaptation, transportation sustainability, bicycle/pedestrian transportation systems, and building energy efficiency. Upon graduation, Brent will pursue a career as a research university faculty member, with the goal of advancing research and education for sustainable engineering.
The National Science Foundation GRFP helps ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States and reinforces its diversity. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees in the U.S. and abroad. Further information about the NSF Graduate Fellowship Program may be found by clicking
here.