2013 OTREC/NITC Scholars Announced

Posted on June 13, 2013

OTREC at Portland State University is pleased to announce the 2013 OTREC/NITC scholars.

Each year, OTREC and NITC recognize outstanding students, awarding them scholarships to further their work on transportation projects.

This year's scholarship winners tackle a range of projects, including long-range visions on how to improve equity in transportation, plans for proposed facility upgrades at specific locations, investigations into new ways to strengthen pavement, and the development of advanced technologies to assist the flow of transportation in the real world.

Arlie Adkins, a Ph.D. student at Portland State University (PSU), is surveying recent movers to learn that people of low-income households often find it harder to live in areas that are friendly to active transportation: many of the "walkable" neighborhoods are now premium real estate, so accessibility becomes inaccessible.

Dustin Hirata and Kyler Weisenback, seniors in the Computer Engineering Technology Department at the Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT), are developing a software application for the collection of intersection turning movement counts for vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians. Their application will be deployed on Android mobile devices.

Alex Bigazzi and Adam Moore, Ph.D. students at PSU, explore the relationship between traffic congestion and air pollution, looking for ways to improve urban air quality.

Oregon Tech students Zachary Hudspeth and Michael Eagle will be creating traffic and onstreet parking simulations, while Jared Jones and Ezra Stockton will both be researching the durability of different road-building materials. Portland State graduate students Sam Thompson, Joseph Broach, and Rebecca Hamilton all share a passion for increasing the bicycle mode share, and will work toward developing various improvements to bicycle infrastructure.

Information about more student projects, and profiles for all of the 2013 scholars, can be found on the OTREC/NITC Scholars page.