Congratulations to Feras El Said (CivMin PhD 2023) and An Wang (CivMin PhD 2020) on receiving CAA Graduate Scholarships in Transportation Engineering!
Unique among scholarship donors, CAA invites winners to present at their annual Board Meeting. Feras and An each presented their research at CAA’s Board Meeting on October 1, 2020.
Dr. Judy Farvolden, UTTRI Executive Director, says “CAA has been a great supporter of UTTRI, and we’re grateful for their continued support.”
Feras El Said presented “Management of Transit and Pedestrian Flows at Multi-modal Transit Hubs,” and An Wang presented “Capturing the effects of traffic and drive cycles on GHG emissions in the GTA and implications for the introduction of electric vehicles.”
Feras Elsaid received his BEng in Civil Engineering from An-Najah National University, Palestine in 2016, and his MASc in Civil Engineering from Concordia University, Canada in 2018.
During his MASc research, he extended traditional pavement management systems to consider bicycling ridership, along with pavement condition, to develop strategic plans for more convenient and safer bicycling networks. He employed GPS bicyclists’ trajectories collected by smartphones to estimate the ridership and applied optimization approaches to schedule interventions and improvements under budget constraints.
Feras is pursuing his PhD under the supervision of UTTRI associated faculty Professor Amer Shalaby and will graduate in August 2023.
An Wang received his bachelor’s degree in Transportation Engineering in China before pursuing a master’s degree in the same field at McGill University in Canada.
In 2016, he started his PhD journey with UTTRI associated faculty Professor Marianne Hatzopoulou at the Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering at the University of Toronto.
He expects to complete his PhD this year.
After exploring various topics in transportation and environmental modelling, An’s current research focuses on quantifying the impacts of urban traffic and drive cycles on vehicular emissions from life-cycle assessment and probabilistic perspectives.
An also has extensive experience in vehicular emission and energy consumption modelling, near-road air quality dispersion modelling, and empirical air quality modelling.
Donors touch the lives of students
“The CAA Graduate Scholarship in Transportation Engineering is a decade-long partnership between CAA South Central Ontario and UTTRI,” explains Adria Miller, Associate Director, Development, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering.
She says, “The Faculty is grateful for CAA’s visionary support of graduate students and the opportunity CAA gives their scholarship winners every year to meet and present their research to the CAA Board of Directors. We extend our sincere thanks to CAA.”
“Awards attract students to the University, motivate them and recognizes their hard work and achievements. They make families proud and prospective employers take notice. Donors touch the lives of many of our students every year by offering critical financial support while celebrating their successes.” Ms. Miller invites anyone considering a scholarship gift to contact her at adria.miller@utoronto.ca.
Statement from scholarship donor CAA
Since 1903, CAA has been a dynamic and innovative leader in mobility. As technology, infrastructure, and modes of transportation change, CAA has always existed to ensure our members and the general public are able to move safely.
The CAA Graduate Scholarship in Transportation Engineering, originally established in 2011 as a five-year program and re-established in 2019, offers a helping hand to hard-working, successful and innovative student researchers, as they continue working on the complexities and next advances to how we travel. We continue to be impressed by the research U of T students are conducting.
This year’s recipients An Wang and Feras El Said focused on measuring the effects of traffic cycles on greenhouse gas emissions, as well as transit and pedestrian flows in multi-modal hubs.
Through their efforts, we are able to look to the future of mobility and ensure it will be safe and efficient for all users.
Congratulations to this year’s recipients!
– Teresa Di Felice, AVP, Government & Community Relations, CAA SCO