The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is coming to a close, and we wanted to take a moment to look back at some of the impacts our center has had. Below, we're shining the spotlight on some of the students that have been supported by the NITC program over the years.

NITC Scholars

The NITC Scholars program recognized outstanding students working on transportation projects, developing the workforce by directing talented students toward research and practice, increasing the number and quality of graduates in transportation. 

Check out the outstanding students who earned NITC scholarships here.

NITC Dissertation Fellows

NITC also supported doctoral students, covering expenses for PhD candidates at NITC partner campuses while working on a dissertation consistent with our focus on improving the mobility of people and goods to build strong communities. Here is a selection of recent NITC dissertation fellows and their work:

Job-Worker Balance & Polycentric Transit-Oriented Development: Toward Indices and Spatio-temporal Trends, by Robert Hibberd, University of Arizona

This research examines how transit-oriented development (TOD) affects employment access and addresses urban equity challenges, particularly in the context of essential workers and the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to demonstrating that TOD can help mitigate spacial mismatch, the study also highlights that TOD can lower transportation costs and enhance job-worker balance by providing more accessible central locations. Additionally, higher levels of spatial density and land use mix can aid in managing pandemics by improving access to essential jobs, which often involve low-income occupations that require face-to-face interactions.

Unsupervised Approach to Investigate Urban Traffic Crashes Based on Crash Unit, Crash Severity, and Manner of Collision, by Farzin Maniei, University of Texas, Arlington

Both crash frequency analysis and real-time crash prediction models typically divide a highway into segments with a constant length for data aggregation. Despite the significant impact of the segment length, as shown in several previous traffic safety studies, no standard approach exists for determining a recommended segment length for crash data aggregation. Maniei's dissertation aims to establish a methodology for determining a recommended fragment size, which will benefit future crash frequency analysis and crash prediction models. The study attempts to capture various groups of traffic crashes, identify their corresponding hotspots, and understand their associated contributing factors.

Expanding Transmobilities: An Art-Informed Methodology For Genderdiverse Travel Behavior, by Nicholas Puczkowskyj, Portland State University

There is a significant gendered travel behavior research gap in the transportation literature. The burgeoning field of transmobilities investigates transgender mobility and evolved from the nexus of mobility justice and gender studies by studying transgender experiences on public transit. This dissertation expands transmobilities to include all modes of transportation and experiences involving genderdiverse identities.  transmobilities to include all modes of transportation and experiences involving genderdiverse identities. Using subjective wellbeing as a unit of measure, an art-informed methodology gathers firsthand experiences and narratives of genderdiverse participants in an effort to understand how their gender expression influences their travel behavior decisions.

Toward Automating the Measurement of Urban Design Qualities Related to Walkability, by S. Hassan Ameli, University of Utah

Many urban designers believe that human-scale "micro-features" are essential for active street life. The conventional ways of measuring the subjective qualities of the street environment require resource-intensive street-level field observation, believed to be one of the main constraints of the widespread application of such methods. This dissertation consisted of two studies that collectively explored the applications of advanced technologies and methods such as Google Street View, computer vision, and deep learning toward automating the measuring of micro-scale characteristics of the built environment related to pedestrian activity and overall walkability.

Free Movement: Enhancing Open Data to Facilitate Independent Travel for Persons with Disabilities, by Shiloh Deitz, University of Oregon

Nearly 40 million Americans report a disability, and of this population, 70 percent travel less because of the challenges they face. When they do travel, those with limited mobility are more likely to be pedestrians or public transit users. Today, free commercial routing applications such as Google Maps offer a robust suite of tools for the able-bodied public to walk, ride bikes, take public transportation, or hail a taxi. Yet, such tools for persons with limited mobility to determine a safe and perhaps even pleasant urban route are experimental, limited, and only available in select cities . This project intervenes by tackling the challenge of missing environmental data

Explore more NITC dissertations here!

Transportation Student Groups

The NITC program supported student transportation groups at our university partner campuses. These groups offer student development by hosting guest speakers, taking field trips, attending conferences and participating in social and professional events. Here are just a couple of recent highlights of student group activity:

University of Texas at Arlington's ITE Student Chapter Selected as Finalists in Transportation Technology Tournament

The Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Student Chapter at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) attended the national ITE conference in Philadelphia this past July. Six UTA students—Peirong Wang, Swastik Khadka, Mino Aji, Md Ashraful Imran, Sijan Shrestha and Andrew Mares—were able to showcase their talents on the national stage under the guidance of UTA faculty member Taylor Li. Along with a fellow UTA student group, the Intelligent Transportation Society (ITS) student chapter, the students were also selected as finalists in the highly competitive transportation technology tournament, hosted by National Operations Center of Excellence and USDOT Research and Technology.

PSU Transportation Students Win 2023 Oregon ITE Traffic Bowl

Portland State University’s Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning (ITE-STEP) group competed in the 32nd annual Bill Kloos Traffic Bowl Competition held by Oregon ITE. It was a tight finish against University of Washington and Oregon Tech, but the PSU student team took first place and impressed the crowd with their knowledge of signs, MUTCD, roundabouts, factors, and all things transportation. They won a $600 cash prize to support STEP activities. (For those interested, the 2024 Oregon Traffic Bowl will be held on Thursday, November 21.)

Alumni Highlights

Listed below are just a handful - by no means an exhaustive list - of featured NITC alumni. See what they're doing now!

Portland State University

Kelly Rodgers, Mike McQueen, Caroline Crisp

Oregon Institute of Technology

Leif Tuel, Caroline Schulze, Cynthia Roe

University of Arizona

Joey Iuliano, Alonso Carrillo, Ash Avila

University of Oregon

Matt McCreary, Brendan Irsfeld, Sadie Mae Palmatier

University of Texas at Arlington

Ariana Grant, Md Mintu Miah, Farzana Chowdhury

University of Utah

Justin Delgado, Justice Prosper Tuffour, Jennifer Leslie

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is one of seven U.S. Department of Transportation national university transportation centers. NITC is a program of the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University. This PSU-led research partnership also includes the Oregon Institute of Technology, University of Arizona, University of Oregon, University of Texas at Arlington and University of Utah. We pursue our theme — improving mobility of people and goods to build strong communities — through research, education and technology transfer.