Ph.D. student wins pre-doctoral fellowship competition
CME student Ramin Shabanpour is having a great year. The Ph.D. candidate in Transportation Engineering is one of only four student to win the Pre-Doctoral Fellowship Competition presented by UIC’s Institute for Environmental Science and Policy (IESP).
Shabanpour, who is advised by Professor Abolfazl Mohammadian, won the fellowship in August for his research project “Assessing Environmental Impacts of Connected Autonomous Vehicle Technologies.” The research seeks to better understand the potential impacts of emerging Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) technology on people travel behavior, traffic conditions, and subsequently its environmental implications and energy consumption.
His research grew out of participation in the project “Developing a Baseline National Platform to Analyze CAV Scenarios,” which was funded by Argonne National Laboratory.
The mission of the IESP pre-doctoral fellowship program is to span traditional boundaries among disciplines while helping students develop knowledge and skills for independent research on the fundamental questions of the present and the future. The fellowship program is open to any pre-doctoral student at UIC whose research is related to interdisciplinary environmental scholarship. Each fellowship carries with it an award of up to $15,000.
“It has been an absolute pleasure to know and to work with Ramin. He is one of the UIC’s finest,” said Professor Mohammadian. “Ramin embodies all of the characteristics that separate a top doctorate student from others. He has an exceptional work ethic, a great passion to learn, an insatiable curiosity, boundless energy, and of course the love of research challenges. Ramin is truly a leader in helping others learn, mentoring several other graduate students. His modesty and appreciation for the opportunities at UIC are qualities that I find endearing.”
Additionally, Shabanpour recently won the “George Krambles Transportation Scholarship” from UIC Urban Transportation Center and the “David Boyce Graduate Award” from CME Department.