Women's Transportation Seminar's 2008 Awards
Civil Engineering Professor Receives Woman of the Year Award, Students Receive Scholarships from WTS
May 2008: Dr. Kara Kockelman, civil engineering professor, has been selected to receive the 2008 Woman of the Year Award from the Women's Transportation Seminar's (WTS) Heart of Texas Chapter. WTS also awarded scholarships to three of UT Austin's students: undergraduate Charlotte Whitehead, Ph.D. candidate Bin "Brenda" Zhou, and Ph.D. candidate Jennifer Duthie. Founded in 1977, WTS is an international organization dedicated to the professional advancement of women in transportation.
Each year, WTS raises funding for their scholarship fund through an annual Transportation Gala and Scholarship Fundraiser. This year's event took place May 1, 2008, at the Airport Hilton in Austin, Texas. Other awards were given for Employer of the Year, Innovative Transportation Solution Award, and the Rosa Parks Diversity Leadership Award. The keynote speaker was Teri Bruner, Regional Administrator of the Southwest Region of the Federal Aviation Administration.
UT Professor, Dr. Kara Kockelman (L) receives the Women's Transportation Seminar (WTS) Woman of the Year 2008 Award from WTS Recognitions Chair, Ashley McLain (R), of Cox/McLain Environmental Consulting.
Kara Kockelman
Professor Kara Kockelman is an Associate Professor of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering and William J. Murray Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin. Kara has established a network of industry professionals and is frequently interviewed by the media as a recognized expert in her field. Her outreach also includes international universities and journals who seek her out for presentations and peer reviews. Her primary research interests include the statistical modeling of urban systems, the economic impacts of transport policy, crash occurrences and consequences, and transport policy making. To date, she has supervised 27 Master's students and six Ph.D. students in their study of Transportation Engineering.
Charlotte Whitehead won the 2008 Ann Irwin Leadership Scholarship.
Charlotte Whitehead
Charlotte Whitehead is a junior at The University of Texas at Austin studying civil engineering. After earning her BS in May 2009, she hopes to attend graduate school to study urban planning and transportation engineering.
Bin "Brenda" Zhou won the 2008 Helen M. Overly Scholarship.
Bin "Brenda" Zhou
Brenda Zhou is a Ph.D candidate in transportation engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests are developing and calibrating integrated transport-land use models, microsimulating interactions among decision-making agents in urban development patterns, and applying spatial statistics and econometrics in transportation studies.
Jennifer Duthie won the 2008 Ann Koby Scholarship.
Jennifer Duthie
Jennifer Duthie is a Ph.D candidate in transportation engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. She received her Master's degree from the same program in 2004 and in 2003 she received her Bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from Cornell University. Jennifer's research focus is on network modeling algorithms, specifically their application to solving policy problems such as assessing their application to solving policy problems such as assessing the public welfare impacts of privatizing roadways.