university of texas at arlington | National Institute for Transportation and Communities

Celebrating the 2020 NITC Students of the Year: Gabby Abou-Zeid, Aliza Whalen, and Erin Roark Murphy

Jan 04, 2021

The Outstanding Student of the Year award is presented during the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC) banquet at each annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, where the U.S. Department of Transportation honors an outstanding graduate student from each UTC. Gabby will be presented with the award for NITC at the virtual CUTC award ceremony and banquet on January 6, 2021. See past NITC Students of the Year.

Another honoree at this year's CUTC banquet is Hau Hagedorn, our associate director, who will receive the CUTC-ARTBA Award for Administrative Leadership.

2020 NITC Outstanding Student of the Year: Gabby Abou-Zeid, Portland State University

Gabby Abou-Zeid holds a B.S. in Sustainable Built Environments from the University of Arizona and is currently a second-year Civil Engineering MSc student with transportation emphasis at PSU. Working in Dr. Kelly Clifton’s Sustainable Urban Planning and Engineering Research Lab (SUPERLab), her interdisciplinary research examines multimodal travel behavior, urban freight, and intersections between transportation and land use. In 2018, she participated in...

Left: A Google streetview image of the University of Texas at Arlington, near the School of Social Work. Right: Sarah Robinson, wearing blue and pink shirt. Text: NITC Student Spotlight, Sarah Robinson, University of Texas at Arlington.

Student Spotlight: Sarah Robinson, University of Texas at Arlington

Nov 02, 2020

Image from Google Streetview

Sarah Robinson is a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Arlington in Arlington, Texas and a NITC dissertation fellow. Her research primarily focuses on service provision and utilization by survivors of intimate partner violence. Sarah's NITC dissertation will explore the transportation challenges of survivors in intimate partner violence shelters. She is particularly interested in how the built environment (i.e. the structure, location, design of service agencies and transportation networks) impacts survivors’ abilities to access services and survivors’ outcomes, such as future experiences of violence and overall health and well-being.

NITC Researcher Profile | ResearchGate Profile

Tell us about yourself?

My name is Sarah Robinson and I am a current...

A streetcar crosses a road with a bicycle signal, with a light rail train visible on an overpass overhead.

NITC Awards $1.14 Million in Funding for New Multimodal Research Nationwide

Jul 28, 2020

The National Institute for Transportation & Communities (NITC) research consortium, led by Portland State University, has awarded $1.14 million in total funding for eleven research projects spanning five universities. This year we focused funding on disaster resilience (including transportation in the era of COVID-19) and improving mobility in marginalized and underserved communities. Several projects examine how emerging technologies can be leveraged to create safer, more sustainable transportation systems for everyone.

Understanding Connections Between Mobility, Transportation, And Quality Of Life In Refugee Communities In Tucson, Arizona ($101,839
Led by Orhon Myadar, Maia Ingram, Nicole Iroz-Elardo and Arlie Adkins of the University of Arizona

Data-Driven Optimization for E-Scooter System Design ($67,619)
Led by Jianqiang Cheng and Yao-jan Wu of the University of Arizona

Understanding the Mobility Impacts of Decentralizing Homeless Services on Mobility in Salt Lake City ($100,206)
Led by Sarah Canham and Ivis Garcia of the University of Utah

Pedestrian...

Introducing the Newest NITC Dissertation Fellows Researching Transit and Transportation Access

Jul 08, 2020

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is proud to introduce our four Summer 2020 Dissertation Fellows, together awarded $60,000 in total funding. Read about their projects below, or learn how to apply for funding through the NITC Dissertation Fellowship Grant.

Travis Glick, Portland State University

Glick_Headshot.jpg

Travis Glick is a PhD student, graduate teaching and research assistant in civil & environmental engineering at Portland State University. He served for two years as president of Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning (STEP), Portland State University's transportation student group. Travis is a NITC scholar and three-time Eisenhower fellow, and his ongoing research examines dwell times, bus-bike conflicts, and transit modeling. Travis's doctoral work tackles a new class of problem that... Read more

Student Spotlight: Md Mintu Miah, University of Texas at Arlington

May 04, 2020

Md Mintu Miah is a Ph.D. student and research assistant in transportation engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. He is interested in data mining and machine learning in the field of transportation engineering. He obtained his MS in transportation engineering from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and BS in civil engineering from Bangladesh.

Tell us about yourself?

Md Mintu Miah was born in 1989 in a small village of Bangladesh. He obtained his Bachelor Degree on Civil Engineering from Rajshahi University of Engineering & Technology (RUET), Bangladesh in 2012. In the year 2014, he joined as a full-time lecturer in the same department and worked until 2017. Later, he obtained his Master's degree in Transportation Engineering from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA (2018). Currently, he is working as a Ph.D. student and Graduate Research Assistant of Transportation Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, USA under the supervision of Professor Stephen P. Mattingly.

What (or who) has influenced your career path in transportation?

The destitute transportation system of my own country and ample research opportunity in the U.S. have jointly influenced me to study in the field of Transportation Engineering. Initially, I was encouraged by my family, colleagues; later, this dream came...

Pedestrians walk along a four-lane road with no sidewalk in Texas.

When Growth Outpaces Infrastructure: Access to Opportunities in Suburban Boomtowns

Feb 05, 2020

Image: Google Streetview (US-380 in McKinney, Texas; Dec 2018)

Promoting Environmental Justice Populations’ Access to Opportunities within Suburban Boomtowns: An Interdisciplinary, Mixed-Methods Approach to Addressing Infrastructure Needs

Jandel Crutchfield, Courtney Cronley and Kate Hyun, University of Texas at Arlington

In the last twenty years, the population increased over 100% in Collin County...

NITC Research at TRB 2020: Link Roundup!

Feb 05, 2020

We've collected posters and presentations of NITC research at TRB. Explore the links below to see what NITC researchers brought to D.C. this year—the below projects have a connection to NITC funding, but are not necessarily representative of the full body of work that researchers at these institutions brought to the annual meeting.

Check out our TRB 2020 photo album here!

Portland State University

(PRESENTATION) "User-Rated Comfort and Preference of Separated Bike Lane Intersection Designs" by Chris Monsere and Nathan McNeil
(PRESENTATION) "Adaptive Bike Share: Expanding Bike Share to People with Disabilities and Older Adults" by John MacArthur, Nathan McNeil, Austin Cummings and Joseph Broach
(PRESENTATION) "Bicycling and Bikeshare among Women of Color in 3 US Cities: Barriers and Opportunities" by...

The Portland Streetcar and Portland MAX are visible, along with a green Bike Signal and a pedestrian walk button.

NITC Invites Submissions for 2020 General Research RFP

Jan 29, 2020

Photo by Cait McCusker

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) program has released its 2020 general research request for proposals. Faculty at NITC's partner universities* are invited to submit abstracts by March 23, 2020.

Through funding provided by the U.S. DOT, we will award up to $1,000,000 to research projects that support NITC’s theme: improving mobility of people and goods to build strong communities. Our theme includes a few key topics:

Increasing access to opportunities.

Well-connected regions and communities can improve social equity by providing access to jobs, services, recreation, and social opportunities. Research should examine barriers to access, including the connections between transportation, land use, and housing. It should look at how to overcome these barriers and improve accessibility, affordability, and equity in our communities.

Improving multi-modal planning and shared use of infrastructure.

Improved mobility requires a range of options for moving people and goods. As concepts of mobility evolve, research is needed to understand how people and firms make mode choices so that we can design better multi-modal systems. Research should examine how...

The NITC Guide to the 2020 Transportation Research Board (TRB) Conference

Jan 06, 2020

This page serves as a homebase for our coverage of the 2020 Transportation Research Board (TRB) annual conference. Check back here for ongoing updates, as well as our Twitter and Facebook.

NITC GUIDE TO TRB (PDF): Our printable schedule of where all of our NITC researchers will be presenting at lectures, poster sessions, and workshops.
NITC RECEPTION AT TRB: Join us for transportation bingo and networking on Monday, January 13 (8:00 –10:30 PM) nearby at Fadó Irish Pub.
NITC STUDENT AWARD AT CUTC BANQUET: We’ll be celebrating our 2019 NITC “Student of the Year," Samuel Jensen of the University of Arizona, at the annual CUTC Banquet.

NITC AT TRB 2020 HIGHLIGHTS

Below is a small sampling of the expertise NITC is bringing to TRB 2020. For the ...

Five "Small Starts" Transportation Projects Receive $100,000 in NITC Funding

Dec 04, 2019

Photo by Andrei Stanescu/iStock

Our National Institute for Transportation & Communities (NITC) research program has awarded grant funding for a new series of Small Starts projects.

The latest Small Starts Grant projects, evaluated by the NITC Advisory Board and selected by NITC's Executive Committee, will explore mobility impacts of construction workzones, transportation equity and barriers for low-income travelers, and the widespread impacts of emerging technologies like e-scooters and ride hailing.

This annual NITC funding program is a unique opportunity to tackle small-scale ($20,000 or less in scope) research projects. In contrast to our larger, annual flagship program ($30–150K), Small Starts enables us to include researchers who:

Bring a diverse, interdisciplinary perspective
Offer a new voice in the field, whether they’re untenured faculty or a researcher who has not received a NITC grant before
Want to kick-start a larger project by first tackling an exploratory study smaller in scope

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