January 11, 2020

Matt Battifarano was honored tonight as a “Student of the Year” at the Council of University Transportation Centers awards banquet held during the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

Annually the United States Department of Transportation honors the most outstanding student from each participating University Transportation Center for his/her achievements and promise for future contributions to the transportation field. Students of the year are selected based on their accomplishments in such areas as technical merit and research, academic performance, professionalism, and leadership.

Meet the 2019 Mobility21 winner:

Matt Battifarano grew up on the buses and subways of New York City and never stopped thinking about transportation. After completing a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics at the University of Chicago, Matt worked for three years as a Data Scientist and Software Engineer for Bridj, a smart mobility start up. Matt is currently a PhD student in the Mobility Data Analytics Center at Carnegie Mellon University where he studies network modeling of ride-hailing systems and connected and autonomous vehicles. Over the summer, Matt interned on the Strategy Team at Uber’s Advanced Technology Group, building a simulator to model Uber’s autonomous vehicles. In 2018 Matt was selected as a Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Research Fellow. 

His nominator, CMU Associate Professor Sean Qian said “Matt’s research interest and strength well match the UTC’s goal on improving mobility and what I envision the future of transportation infrastructure, data-driven decision making for mobility systems….Discussing research with him is always inspiring. I found his attention to details and intent to understand the material and investigate further depth is excellent. He has taken advantage of every opportunity to gain knowledge, experience and participate in problem solving. He offers in-depth understanding for the machine learning model, and was able to apply it to the transportation problem quickly and thoroughly.”

Educating, recruiting and training new workers is critical to managing our country’s infrastructure safely and efficiently.  Mobility21 UTC strives to help develop a transportation workforce capable of designing and maintaining the complex transportation systems of tomorrow. Help us congratulate our 2019 UTC Student of the Year!

To view the Student of the Year program booklet click here: Booklet.