News & Announcements

Naila Sharmeen has been selected to receive Graduate Dean's Dissertation Fellowship Award. Naila Sharmeen, a 4th year PhD candidate of Transportation Science at ITS Irvine, has been selected to receive Graduate Dean's Dissertation Fellowship Award from UCI Graduate Division. This fellowship is one of UC Irvine’s most distinguished and is intended to release the student from non-academic obligations till the completion of the degree. -5/26/2020

UCI placed first on Sierra magazine’s ‘Coolest Schools’ list. This is the fifth consecutive year that the UCI campus has ranked among the top 'greenest' in the nation.
Ranking reflects campus’s Earth-friendly infrastructure, programs and research. Click here for more information

UCI placed 9th among all public universities and 2nd in the "value added" subcategory in Money magazine's ranking of the country's 665 best colleges. The "value added" category rates schools on a range of factors, including the academic and economic profile of its students and the distribution of majors. UCI ranked 32nd overall. Read more.

TranSci student Suman Mitra is awarded the 2014 Phi Beta Kappa International Scholarship. Phi Beta Kappa International Scholarship is awarded to foreign students who are conducting graduate studies in academic institutions in Southern California with Phi Beta Kappa Chapters. The awards are given to students who are counterparts of Phi Beta Kappa scholars in the American system, that is, foreign students of academic excellence.

Times Higher Education ranks UCI as first among U.S. universities younger than 50, based on research and teaching excellence. UCI has been ranked first for the third year in a row since the introduction of THE's “100 Under 50” listings. Read more.

Cal Poly Pomona's Civil Engineering and Urban & Regional Planning Departments successfully hosted their first UCTC conference on April 17-18. UCI's TranSci students were among the many student researchers who presented their work at the conference. Click here for more information on the conference.

The following TranSci students presented their research at the 93rd Annual Transportation Research Board (TRB) meeting in Washington D.C.

Vanessa Luong
- Presentation title: "Extracting Traffic Patterns from Loop Detector Data Using Multiple Change Point Detection”

Pedro Camargo
- Presentation title 1: Exploratory Use of Raster Images as Data Source for Freight Modeling
- Presentation title 2: Validating Truck Route Enumeration Algorithms Using GPS Data

Fatemeh Ranaiefar
- Presentation title 1: A Structural Direct Demand Model for Inter-regional Commodity Flow Forecasting
- Presentation title 2: An Alternative Method to Estimate Balancing Factors for the Disaggregation of OD Matrices

Paulos Lakew
- Presentation title: Determinants of air cargo traffic in California

Ashley Lo

Stephanie Mak

XiaoXia Shi

Pedro Camargo presented his paper on the use of raster images in transportation modeling at the Transportation Research Board SHRP 2 Symposium. The TRB, Second Strategic Highway Research Program conducted its second symposium centered on innovative freight demand modeling and data on October 21 & 22, 2013. Click here for more information

Paulos Lakew has been selected as a recipient of a research stipend as part of the Graduate Research Award Program on Public-Sector Aviation Issues for the academic year 2013-2014. Sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation and administered by the Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) of the Transportation Research Board/National Academies, this award is being presented for successful completion during the upcoming academic year of a research paper on the topic as noted above. Click here for more information

Jamie Kang and Fatemeh Ranaiefar have been nominated as "ENO Fellows" and will attend the ENO Transportation Leadership Conference in Washington DC. Click here for more information

Jean-Daniel M. Saphores has been nominated to be a Member of the TRB Committee on Ports and Channels (AW010) for the term 4/15/2013 to 4/14/2016.

Fatemeh Ranaiefar(TranSci), Joseph J. Chow, Daniel Rodriguez, Pedro Camargo(TranSci), and Stephen G. Ritchie received a "Best Paper Award" submitted at the 92nd Transportation Research Board annual meeting.
This outstanding paper in Freight Modeling is titled "Geographic Scalability and Supply Chain Elasticity of a Structural Commodity Generation Model Using Public Data"

TranSci student Paulos Lakew has been awarded the Social Science Associate Dean's fellowship for the Winter 2013 Quarter.

Jamie Kang and Fatemeh Ranaiefar(TranSci) have been selected to receive a $4,500 scholarship from the Orange County Chapter of WTS.
An award will be presented to Jamie at the WTS Annual Awards Gala at the Disney Grand Californian Hotel on December 6th, 2012.

TranSci student Fatemeh Ranaiefar wins the TRANSLOG 2012 Student Paper Award
The 4th International Translog 2012 Conference will be held on October 15-16, 2012 and is Presented by the McMaster Institute for Transportation and Logistics (MITL) and Supply Chain and Logistics Association Canada (SCL).
Fatemeh's paper is titled "A Structural Translog Direct Demand Model for Interurban Commodity Distribution".

UCI makes Sierra magazine’s ‘Coolest Schools’ list for third consecutive year
Ranking reflects campus’s Earth-friendly infrastructure, programs and research. Click here for more information

UCI ranks first in the nation on list of top 100 universities under 50 years old
UC Irvine ranks first in the U.S. and fourth in the world among the 100 best universities less than 50 years old, according to an analysis by Times Higher Education. Founded in 1965, UCI also is the youngest university to gain membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities. Times Higher Education analysis puts it fourth among young institutions worldwide.

Read More: http://today.uci.edu/news/2012/06/nr_theranking_120601.php

TranSci student Todd Matsubara selected for California State University Chancellor's Doctoral Incentive Program Award
The CSU Chancellor's Doctoral Incentive Program is awarded to students who reflect promise as doctoral students and who also show interest in competing for future tenure-track faculty openings in the California State University. The program awards $10,000 per year over a three year period during the student's doctoral studies.

TranSci students attended the UCTC Student Conference at UC Davis
The UC Davis Sustainable Transportation Center hosted the University of California Transportation Center (UCTC) Student Conference on April 20, 2012. UC Irvine's TranSci students were among the researchers in various areas of transportation studies who presented their ongoing research and findings. For more details about the event, visit the Conference website: http://stc.ucdavis.edu/Events/UCTC/about.html.

TranSci student Hang Liu won first place in the ITS World Congress Student Smart Phone ITS App Competition
Mobile app developed by TranSci PhD candidate Hang Liu, based on a paper co-authored by ITS Post-Doctoral researcher Dr. Joseph Chow and Hang Liu (UCI-ITS-WP-11-6: Multicommodity profitable tour problems for an online activity routing system).won first place in the 2011 ITS World Congress Student Smart Phone ITS App Competition.

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. The objective of the competition is to provide an opportunity for today’s students - whatever their field - to apply their knowledge in a thought-provoking and enjoyable competition and to build awareness of ITS as a career path with unlimited potential.

As the winner Hang will receive a $1,500 prize. The award will be announced at the World Congress Awards Ceremony and featured in an ITS America press release. The app will be demonstrated at the ITS America Pavilion in the World Congress exhibit hall and made downloadable from the ITS America website.

The winning app provides joint activity and route guidance to users as a next-generation system to current activity recommendation (Yelp, CitySearch) and route recommendation (Google Maps, MapQuest) systems. The app recommends places and the optimal route to go through them for user specified activity types based on users' preference settings, making optimal activity planning a "one-click" task. This technology will improve the mobility of users by focusing optimal route guidance on the activities, which in turn will reduce inefficient travel and mitigate environmental externalities. It also showcases an interdisciplinary merger of ITS, activity-based research, and logistics.

Hang Liu was awarded 2011 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 each year. Students may be from any department or program on any UC campus (except Davis). TranSci PhD student Hang Liu was awarded the grant for 2011 cycle. For details please see the official UCTC announcement.

New TranSci Student Orientation
The orientation meeting for new TS graduate students will be held on Friday, September 23 from 10 to 11 AM in ITS. It will be followed by a lunch at 11:30. For more information, please contact Anne Marie DeFeo (amdefeo@uci.edu)

Welcome Picnic for New ITS and Transportation Science Students
Welcome Picnic for New ITS and Transportation Science Students on Monday, September 19th, 2011, at 5:30 PM, at the Mason Regional Park. Food: BBQ! (vegetarian options provided). To confirm your attendance, please contact Sarah Hernandez (s.hernandez@uci.edu)

Roberto Ayala Completed His PhD Dissertation
TranSci student Roberto Ayala recently completed his PhD dissertation titled "Of Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Market Structure and Incentives for a more Efficient, Cleaner and Fairer Transportation System". Congratulations and best wishes for the future.

Xiaoling Ling Completed Her MS Thesis
TranSci student Xiaoling Ling recently completed her MS thesis titled "Understanding Travel Behavior and Vehicular Emissions from GPS and Diary Data: An Application to Southern California". Congratulations and best wishes for the future.