December 5, 2018

Matt Battifarano and Rick Grahn, both PhD students in Carnegie Mellon University’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department were selected as prestigious Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program awardees.

Before starting his coursework at CMU, Matt Battifarano spent three years as a data scientist at Bridj, a smart urban transportation startup where he built models of transit demand within a city and methods to optimize vehicle routes to meet that demand. He received my Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics with a minor in Computational Neuroscience from the University of Chicago in 2012.

Rick Grahn worked as a structural engineer and obtained his Professional Engineer certification in the State of California before enrolling in CMU.  He also served a year with Americorps providing affordable housing to residents in Oakland, CA. He has a BS in Civil Engineering (2009) and MS in Structural Engineering (2011) from the University of New Mexico.

The mission of the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program is to attract the nation’s brightest minds to the field of transportation and advance transportation workforce development. The DDETFP is managed by Technology Partnership Program, Federal Highway Administration. The DDETFP encompasses all modes of transportation.

The DDETFP awards are fellowships to students pursuing degrees in transportation-related disciplines. This program advances the transportation workforce by helping to attract the nation’s brightest minds to the field of transportation, encouraging future transportation professionals to seek advanced degrees, and helping to retain top talent in the U.S. transportation industry.

From its initial support of graduate research fellowships in 1983, to the current program’s inception in the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, the DDETFP has awarded over $50 million to the brightest minds in the transportation industry. From this investment, fellows have pushed for innovative change in multimodal areas from highway infrastructure to aviation to maritime, making the industry more effective and efficient. Fellows pursue careers in academia, private industry, and public service, becoming leaders across the nation.

DDETFP awards are merit-based and generally result in 150-200 grants annually, subject to the availability of funds.

[Source: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/innovativeprograms/centers/workforce_dev/post_secondary_education.aspx]

Congratulations to Matt and Rick for being selected as 2018 Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program Awardees!