January 8, 2022
Carnegie Mellon University student Rick Grahn was honored tonight as Mobility21 University Transportation Center’s “Student of the Year” at the Council of University Transportation Center’s annual awards event.
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.
Carnegie Mellon University’s Traffic21 Institute houses Mobility21, the National University Transportation Center for Improving Mobility. Students from CMU, University of Pennsylvania, The Ohio State University, or Community College of Allegheny County were eligible for the Mobility21 UTC nomination.
Meet our winner:
Rick Grahn, the Mobility21 National University Transportation Center for Improving Mobility Student of the Year.
Rick Grahn is a research assistant working under Dr. Sean Qian and Dr. Chris Hendrickson in the Mobility Data Analytics Center. His research interests include shared modes and public transit, with a focus on how to best integrate new technologies to improve their efficiency, accessibility, and reliability in both urban and rural settings. Rick is looking forward to a career in research addressing sustainability and equity issues within the transportation system. He is also a registered professional engineer in California.
In 2021, Rick published a paper in Transportation Research Part C and a paper in ASCE: Journal of Infrastructure Systems.
Educating, recruiting and training new workers is critical to managing our country’s infrastructure safely and efficiently. Mobility21 strives to help develop a transportation workforce capable of designing and maintaining the complex transportation systems of tomorrow. Help us congratulate our 2022 UTC Student of the Year!
To learn more about the University Transportation Centers’ Student of the Year awards please click here.