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      MURP student Laurel Reimer has been selected to receive a scholarship from the Orange County Women’s Transportation Seminar(WTS)
    • Laurel Reimer, a second year student in PPD's Masters of Urban and Regional Planning program, has been selected to receive an Orange County Women's Transportation Seminar (WTS) Scholarship for 2011. WTS scholarships are designed to encourage new professionals to undertake careers in the important area of transportation. Laurel will formally receive this award at the WTS Gala in December.
    • Laurel has conducted research on bicycle infrastructure at the University of Groningen, Netherlands and has a strong interest in sustainable transportation. In her essay for the WTS scholarship, Laurel made the compelling argument that women have tremendous influence over local trips, and that "having a woman's point of view in planning bicycle facilities could help to increase overall ridership" in other countries, including the U.S. After graduation, she seeks to put her knowledge of this subject to work "to help California cities implement practical bicycle infrastructures." Laurel also plans to work with an organization "that promotes sustainable policies and encourages integrated, public transit and pedestrian friendly projects."
      Mobile app developed by Hang Liu, based on a paper by Joseph Chow and Hang Liu, won first place in the ITS World Congress Student Smart Phone ITS App Competition
    • ITS PhD student Hang Liu won first place in the 2011 ITS World Congress Student Smart Phone ITS App Competition. The winning app was developed based on a paper co-authored by ITS Post-Doctoral researcher Joseph Chow and Hang Liu (UCI-ITS-WP-11-6). The app provides joint activity and route guidance to users, by recommending places and the optimal route to go through them based on user inputs. The Student Smart Phone ITS App Competition "is designed to encourage student interest and future participation in the development of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and related mobility, safety, and environmental solutions that address global transportation concerns". As the winner Hang receives a $1,500 prize. The award will be announced at the ITS World Congress Awards Ceremony, and the app will be demonstrated at the World Congress and made downloadable from the
      ITS America website.
      Joe Chow appointed as the chair of the subcommittee on Research Needs in AT015: Freight Transportation Planning and Logistics Committee at TRB. In this capacity I he is also going to be the committee liaison with TRB on research. The sub-committee is expected to lead in developing problem statements for the AT015 committee to submit to the TRB system by coordinating between the committee members and friends.
      WTS-OC Now Accepting Scholarship Applications **due October 14, 2011**. For more information please click here.
      Hang Liu was awarded a 2011 UCTC Dissertation Fellowship. For more details click here
      UCI Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Student Chapter places 2nd in ITE Southern California Section Annual Student Chapter Competition.
    • The UCI ITE Student Chapter wrapped up a year of hard work and fun on Wednesday May 25, 2011 at the ITE Southern California Section Student Presentation Night in Fullerton, California with a presentation by Chapter officers Ben Fuller (President) and Jonathan Masukawa (Vice-President) on the Chapter project “Low cost vehicle detection system to help Green UCI parking.” (download presentation here). Student Chapters from six Southern California Universities were represented.
    • The UCI Chapter presentation came in 1st. Overall, however, 1st place in the 2010-11 Annual Student Chapter Competition went to Cal State Long Beach, with UCI coming in 2nd. For their achievements, the UCI ITE Student Chapter was awarded $1900 by the iTE Southern California Section and the Orange County Traffic Engineering Council.
      Research on "Green driving strategies based on inter-vehicle communications" by Dr. Wenlong Jin's group was featured at the Eco-Driving Workshop, held at UC Berkeley on May 18th, 2011. During the all-day long workshop, researchers from the Transportation Sustainability Research Center of UC Berkeley, along with colleagues from UC Davis, Irvine, and Riverside and representatives from government and industry, examined eco-driving and its potential for reducing fuel use and emissions. Here's why they're optimistic on the future of eco-driving. [more]

      Jamie Kang received the Graduate Student Community Award given by the Association of Graduate Students for her founding of ITS's Women's Group. This award recognizes an outstanding graduate student advocate and leader who is not currently a part of AGS Council. This award is meant to recognize a current graduate student who has, under their own direction, committed their time and dedication to improving graduate student life at UCI.
      Pierre Auza was awarded the Railway Club of Southern California 2011 Scholarship. The RCSC has been dedicated to promoting the diverse professions within the railroad industry and sponsoring fellowship among railroad professionals in the Southern California area. For further details, click here.
      Professor Wenlong Jin and Professor Will Recker co-authored a paper titled, "Instantaneous information propagation in a traffic stream through inter-vehicle communication, Volume 40, Issue 3, 2006, Pp 230-250,Jin, W.-L. | Recker, W.W.", which appears on the list of Top 10 Cited articles published in the last five years in Transportation Research Part B. The data were extracted from Scopus (on Thu Mar 10 20:27:57 GMT 2011). Specifically, it is no. 7 on the list with a citation number of 27. For more information click here.
      Joe Chow's paper "Real Option Pricing of Network Design Investments" published in Transportation Science is one of the "Featured Articles" on the INFORMS home page
      Mahdieh Allahviranloo was awarded the Helene M. Overly Memorial Scholarship, which will be presented to her at the WTS Annual Scholarship and Awards Dinner in San Francisco this May.
      • "In memory of Helene M. Overly, the first Executive Secretary of WTS, the Board of Directors voted to name the annual WTS graduate scholarship, the Helene M. Overly Memorial Scholarship, to honor Helene for her dedicated service to WTS. Helene became a WTS member in 1981. She brought with her 15 years of experience in public service, tremendous organizational
        abilities, and a spirit of determination that helped WTS nearly double its membership in two years. The Helene M. Overly Memorial Scholarship is in the amount of $6,000." This scholarship is the highest scholarship that can be awarded by WTS.
        Professor Stephen Ritchie selected to be the 2010 ASCE Orange County award recipient of the “Distinguished Engineering Educator of the Year”.
      • This is the second time Dr. Ritchie has received this award. He was honored at a dinner event on February 17, 2011. For more details, click here.
        Jamie Kang and Hsin-Ping Hsu were awarded a 2010 UCTC Dissertation Fellowship
        • UCTC, with financial support from the U.S. Department of Transportation and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), offers doctoral dissertation grants of up to $20,000 each year. Awards are made each Fall and Winter. Students may be from any department or program on any UC campus (except Davis).
          Sarah Quiggle Awarded Brython Davis Fellowship
          • This fellowship provides support to students who demonstrate outstanding past academic achievement as well as future promise. To be eligible for the Brython Davis Fellowship, one of the nominee's parents must currently be, or have been, a regular member of either the United States Navy or Marine Corps. Sarah's father is a retired Navy officer. Each fellow will receive $9,000 total stipend for the academic quarter of the award.
            Transportation research program gets $6.25 million UCOP grant
            • A new sustainable transportation research program co-directed by Professor Stephen Ritchie, director of the UCI Institute of Transportation Studies, has been awarded $6.25 million over five years from the UC Office of the President. The program is one of 37 Multicampus Research Programs & Initiatives sharing $68 million in competitive grant funding. "Transportation is central to economic and social life in California," said Ritchie, who will lead the research program with Samer Madanat, director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Transportation Studies, and Daniel Sperling, director of the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies. More
              An op-ed by Jan Brueckner, economics professor and department chair, is featured in the New York Times October 15, 2010
              • From the NYT:
                High-speed rail systems look very appealing, whizzing people to their destinations with great comfort and convenience, while generating minimal environmental impact. However, building such a system from scratch is exceedingly expensive, and recouping an appreciable part of the cost through fares is only possible when the traffic density on the route is very high. In other words, high-speed trains must be full and frequent in order for the system to have a chance of making economic sense. Click here for the full story.
              Professor Stephen Ritchie Receives Masters Transportation Engineering Award from ASCE
              • Stephen Ritchie, Civil & Environmental Engineering professor and Institute of Transportation Studies director, has been awarded the Frank M. Masters Transportation Engineering Award for 2010 from the American Society of Civil Engineers. The award recognizes a society member for the best example of innovative or noteworthy planning, design or construction of transportation facilities. Ritchie was honored "[for] his innovative work in the development and application of new technologies in transportation engineering" and will receive the award in October 2010 at the ASCE Annual Conference in Las Vegas.
                TRB Pyke Johnson Award
                • A team of ITS-Irvine researchers has won the prestigious Pyke Johnson Outstanding Paper Award from the U.S. Transportation Research Board (TRB). This award may be given annually for the best paper presented at the TRB Annual Meeting in the area of planning and environment, and subsequently published in the TRB Transportation Research Record.

                  The 2009 winning paper is "Environmental Impacts of a Major Freight Corridor: A Study of I-710 in California," co-authored by Gunwoo Lee, Soyoung (Iris) You, Stephen Ritchie, Jean-Daniel Saphores, Mana Sangkapichai and R. Jayakrishnan. The award was presented at the TRB Annual Meeting in Washington DC in January 2010. For a copy of the paper, click here