UTA students earn awards for transportation research
Nine University of Texas at Arlington students have received coveted Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowships from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The students come from UTA’s College of Engineering; College of Architecture, Planning and Public Affairs (CAPPA); and College of Business.
“I am excited about this new group of Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship students and the continuation of what has been a very successful partnership with the U.S. Department of Transportation,” said Laureano Hoyos, a professor of civil engineering who manages the fellowship program at UTA.
Since 2017, the year UTA was included in this program, nearly 60 fellowship awards have been granted to undergraduate and graduate students pursuing research on a wide range of multi-disciplinary transportation-related subjects, including the engineering, economical, societal and governmental aspects of the nation’s transportation infrastructure. Students also attend the annual Transportation Research Board Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
The UTA recipients are engineering students Kelly Patterson, Kelli Greenwood, Anika Rimu, Taryn DiLorenzo, Ehiremen Ebewele and Eder Fuabuna; CAPPA students Victoria Kiker and Alyssa Knox; and business student Saulo Aguilera. Awards ranged from $1,500 to $10,000 per student, with Patterson ($10,000) Greenwood ($8,500) and Rimu ($7,000) receiving the largest awards.
The mission of the Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program is to attract the nation’s brightest minds to the field of transportation, advance transportation workforce development and retain top talent in the U.S. transportation industry. Fellowships are merit-based, and 150-200 are generally distributed nationwide each year.
Hoyos and the Center for Transportation Equity, Decisions and Dollars (CTEDD) administer the program at UTA. CTEDD is a federally designated University Transportation Center led by UTA in partnership with California Polytechnic State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of South Florida.
Recipients of the Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship have pushed for innovative change in areas such as highway, aviation and maritime infrastructure and pursued careers in academia, private industry and public service.
UTA’s latest recipients of the Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship will benefit greatly from the experience, said Kate Miller, UTA’s vice president for research and innovation.
“Having eight students earn Eisenhower Transportation Fellowships acknowledges both UTA’s excellence in transportation research and its commitment to providing UTA’s students opportunities to carry out research at the leading edge of the field,” Miller said.
- Written by Jeremy Agor – College of Engineering