Civil Engineering Students Earn Multiple Honors

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From left: Sanjeev Bhurtyal, Karla Diaz-Corro, Mariah Crews and Sharif Mahmud.

Five civil engineering students took home first place prizes for their research related to transportation data.

Doctoral student Magdalena Asborno earned first place in the Student Poster Competition and a four-student team earned first in the Student Design Competition at the 2019 joint annual meeting of the Midwest District and Missouri Valley Chapters of the Institute of Transportation Engineers.

Asborno took first in the poster competition for her work entitled "Estimating waterborne port calls from LPMS and truck GPS data: a multi-commodity assignment model." Her new, multimodal fusion model closes a critical gap in the ability to estimate port-level commodity flows, which is essential for estimating the demand for freight transportation facilities and services on inland waterways.

In the Student Design Competition, where teams of students collaborate on a project and present their solutions to a panel of professionals, graduate students Sanjeev Bhurtyal, Kayla Diaz-Corro, and Sharif Mahmud, and undergraduate student Mariah Crews, earned first for their project focused on creating a city of 'Complete Streets.'  Their approach involved a city design in which the streets are designed, operated and maintained with all users in mind; intended to be both vehicle and bike friendly, along with safe transit options for pedestrians.  The project achieved a vision of a livable, sustainable and safe environment for everyone, connecting all people from all over the community.

The University of Arkansas was also represented for the first time in the Traffic Bowl Competition, a quiz match that tests knowledge in areas related to transportation planning and engineering along with other topics.  The team, comprised of Sanjeev, Bhurtyal, Karla Diaz-Corro and Maria Crews, took 3rd place.

Karla Diaz-Corro was also awarded the Jan Kibble Student Scholarship, which is awarded to deserving students pursuing course work in traffic or transportation engineering.  The award marked the second consecutive year a University of Arkansas student earned the scholarship.

All five students are mentored by Sarah Hernandez, assistant professor of civil engineering, and work in the Freight Transportation Data Research Lab.