Nayibe Perez is studying for a Master’s in Civil Engineering specializing in Transportation at The City College of New York. After graduating with a Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering, she started working as a document control clerk at DMJM Harris. She is now the Project Control Engineer for the Tappan Zee Bridge Project at AECOM. She plans on focusing her career on helping to develop transit projects in order to increase their efficiency and sustainability. Her background in computers has also sparked her curiosity about how intelligent transportation systems can improve transit.

I, Yusuf Mehta, Ph.D., have known Mr. Ashish Wadkar for the past year as an Instructor and as a research advisor. Mr. Ashish Wadkar has clearly demonstrated proficiency in the Civil Engineering Materials class, and advanced transportation class that I taught this year. He has spearheaded the effort in the safety research project sponsored by the New Jersey Department of Transportation and pavement research project sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration. He has taken the lead in submitting timely reports and conduct scholarly work.

Tra Vua is working on her Ph.D. in Transportation Planning and Engineering at Polytechnic Institute of New York University. She is working under Professors Roess and Prassas on the Dynamic Rate Structure of Mileage-based User Charge (or the Vehicle Miles Traveled Tax). She became interested in this topic after a trip back to Vietnam in 2008, where she found that the increase in vehicles since her last time there seven years earlier had grown “at a dizzying pace” and the fumes, noise, congestion, and accidents levels were out of control.

Through his internship under the Academic Initiative with the NYMTC Technical Group, Evan Bialostozky developed an algorithm that detects transportation modes based on data from Global Postioning System (GPS)-based personal travel surveys. The algorithm determines mode of travel based on the input of a series data for date, time, latitude and longitude records. This data was generated by GPS loggers which were carried by survey respondents during their travels.

Peter Feroe participated in an internship under the Academic Initiative with the Westchester County Department of Planning, focusing on Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) opportunities in the I-287 Corridor. He was supervised by then Deputy Commissioner (now Commissioner) Ed Buroughs of Westchester County’s Department of Planning. His academic advisor was Professor Ingrid Gould Ellen of New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Through the Academic Initiative, Jennifer Lozano participated in an internship with MTA Capital Construction (MTA CC) to evaluate the outcome of workforce development initiatives and measure their success. Her supervisor was Regina Gramola of MTA CC. Jennifer was actively involved with the issue of workforce development and contributed to the development of several initiatives including technical lessons learned, mentoring, and professional development and training. She participated in designing evaluation and measurement techniques of the workforce development initiatives.

Darrell Sonntag conducted independent research on the topic “Modeling the Temporal and Size Distributions of Diesel Particulate Matter Emissions.” His academic advisor was Dr. Oliver Gao of Cornell University and his professional advisor was Larry McAuliffe, NYMTC’s Sustainability Manager. Diesel particulate matter emissions are a serious health threat in the NYMTC region. However, little is known about important characteristics of particle emissions, including the size-distribution of fine and ultrafine particles.

Nicholas Tulach conducted independent research on the topic “The Tyranny of the Shovel: Exploring Changes in the Planning Process During Periods of Economic Crisis.” His academic advisor was Dr. Daniel Chatman of Rutgers and his professional advisor was Michael Flynn of NYCDOT. This research explored the lessons learned by local agencies from past financial crises in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The research addressed the following questions: What happens to decision making in periods of economic crises? Do these crises mark significant shifts in the local practice of planning?

For his independent research topic, Michael Silas conducted research into the effectiveness of policies to shift freight deliveries to the off-peak hours of the day. The objective of his research was to gain a better understanding of how to increase the participation in off-peak deliveries through the use of behavioral simulation and economic incentives.