ITS Oregon is pleased to announce the 2008 scholarship winners, proudly sponsored by ITS Oregon member Athey Creek Consultants. With the additional generous donations, we were able to award three $500 scholarships to the following outstanding and worthy students:
- Lisa Diercksen is a first year student in the MSCE program at PSU specializing in transportation. She earned her BSCE at Iowa State University. While at Iowa State University, she interned for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources in Des Moines, IA; Kimley-Horn and Associates in Phoenix, AZ; and most recently with TranSystems in Kansas City, MO. At TranSystems, Lisa built a travel demand model for Kearney, MO, using VISUM modeling software and also worked on various traffic impact studies. Currently, she is working as a Graduate Research Assistant for Dr. Chris Monsere in the Intelligent Transportation Systems Lab at PSU evaluating the Safety Investment Program policies for Oregon.
- Huan Li, master’s student in Portland State University, works as a GRA in ITS lab. She developed an interest in transportation engineering when she was first involved in a regional traffic organization project. Through this project, she found transportation efficiency improvement relates to several aspects, like policy, planning, economic, and management. Huan’s interest in dealing with transportation problems drew her to the ITS program at PSU to learn more about updated technology and methods in the field. She hopes to gain a more extensive view of transportation through studying at PSU. Right now, she works with signals and freeway management which bring her more interesting topics in the transportation field.
- Rafael J. Fernandez-Moctezuma was born and raised in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. He received his B.S. in Computer Systems Engineering from ITESM Campus San Luis (2001), and his M.Sc. in Computer Science (Adaptive Systems) from OGI-OHSU (2005). He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Data and Information Management Laboratory at Portland State University, working with Professor David Maier. His interests in database systems, data stream systems, and machine learning intersect well with his curiosity in transportation systems. He has enjoyed a year long collaboration with Professor Robert Bertini and the Intelligent Transportation Systems Laboratory, where he has worked in traffic data archiving, analysis, and traveler information systems.
