Three Samueli School Students Earn Women’s Transportation Seminar Scholarships
Civil and environmental engineering students recognized for research in transportation
Three students from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in The Henry Samueli School of Engineering have been awarded Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS) Orange County Scholarships.
Megan Otters is a fourth-year civil engineering major specializing in transportation. She is an active member of the Engineering Student Council (ESC) and is also involved in the Campuswide Honors Program (CHP) and Chi Epsilon. She is currently participating in the UC Irvine Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) student project and is beginning research on clean trucks in and around the Southern California area. Additionally, Otters is interning at an engineering firm dedicated to rail design, a field she hopes to pursue after graduation.
Mahdieh Allahviranloo is a second-year Ph.D. student in transportation systems engineering under the supervision of Professor Wilfred Recker, Ph.D. She earned both her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and master’s degree in transportation engineering from Sharif University of Technology in her native Iran. Her research interests are network modeling and optimization and emissions. Currently, she is working with household activity patterns and applying them to evaluate the potential energy/emissions impacts of alternative fuel vehicles. The model is an optimization model that considers a household’s out-of-home activities and determines the usage pattern of alternative vehicles by households. With the results, the energy demand and emission profiles for alternative vehicles can be estimated.
Annie Chung is scheduled to earn her master’s in civil engineering with a focus on transportation and her master’s degree in urban and regional planning from UC Irvine in June of 2011. Chung’s career goal is to use her strong interest in the utilization of a well-planned public transit network to benefit and aid a city’s needs and public health and welfare. Chung, a native of Hong Kong, wants to combine the technical knowledge of an engineer with the analytical capacity of a planner to help find the solution to our declining environmental and public health, as well as creating sustainable mobility trends in land use planning that promotes a cleaner future.
Founded in 1977, WTS is an international organization dedicated to the professional advancement of women in transportation. Boasting roughly 4,100 members, both men and women, WTS is helping women find opportunity and recognition in the transportation industry. Through its professional activities, networking opportunities, and unparalleled access to industry and government leaders, WTS is turning the glass ceiling into a career portal. WTS scholarships encourage bright new professionals to undertake careers in the area of transportation.
