Lina Elmorshedy took first prize at the fourth annual ITS Canada Essay Competition with her essay “Evaluating the Impacts of Adaptive Cruise Control Systems on Congested Urban Freeways and Emphasizing the Need for New Traffic Control Strategies.”
Lina is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering at the University of Toronto working under the supervision of Professor Baher Abdulhai. She expects to graduate in 2022.
She received the award on November 29, 2021 at a virtual presentation event at the ITS Canada 2021 Winter Conference. The event, hosted by Ryerson University’s Professor Bilal Farooq, Chair of the 2021 ITSC Student Essay Contest, was livestreamed and recorded. Lina presented live, talked about her essay, and answered questions. As first prize winner, Lina received $2,000 cash. The competition was sponsored by International Road Dynamics Inc.
Lina’s essay pertains to the theme “Challenges and Innovation in a Changing World” and discusses the impacts of ADAS in conjunction with Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communication capabilities representing Connected and Automated Vehicular Systems (CAVS) which would undertake vehicle functions and ease the driving task further. She posits that the introduction of CAVS will transform the future of transportation, and there is a need to quantify the effect of such technologies on congested urban transportation systems and potentially steer their effect in a positive direction by implementing appropriate traffic control strategies.
About Lina Elmorshedy
Lina Elmorshedy received a BSc in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the University of Alexandria, Egypt in 2008. From 2009 to 2013, she worked as a network engineer in Egypt, before going on to earn an MASc in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of British Columbia in 2016.
About her research, Lina says:
My research focuses on modelling vehicular automation technologies, first to quantify their impact on the transportation network and second to develop traffic control strategies to overcome the challenges introduced by the advent of such systems in addition to exploiting their opportunities to reduce freeway congestion using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques.
She says that participating in the essay competition was a valuable experience.
The ITS Student Essay Competition was an opportunity to write up and present my research in a story format suitable for a general audience, and explain things simply—which promoted my understanding as well.
I am truly honoured by the recognition and beyond grateful for the support offered by ITS Canada. – Lina Elmorshedy
About the essay competition
The competition promotes the ITS expertise, experience and interests of young researchers from Canadian universities. The essays are intended to connect academic research to real-world transportation issues.
Submitted essays were reviewed and scored by an ITS Canada expert panel of judges. Winning essays are judged to be of high quality and relevant to the ITS industry.
About ITS Canada
In addition to hosting this student essay competition, ITS Canada further supports young researchers by hosting an Education Roundtable and a Young Professionals panel session during their annual conference.
ITS Canada defines Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) as the application of advanced and emerging technologies (computers, sensors, control, communications, and electronic devices) in transportation to save lives, time, money, energy and the environment.
Watch the ITS Canada 2021 Student Essay Award Presentation video.
Read more: ITS Canada 2021 Essay Competition Award Winners (external link)