Kemba Walcott received his B.E. (Civil) degree from The City College, CUNY in December 5 2005, and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering at the same institution.

Chan Ju (Jeannie) Kwon is the 2007 recipient of the UTRC’s WTS Student Award of $1000, which goes to the winner of the Women’s Transportation Seminar’s (WTS) Leonard Braun Memorial Graduate Scholarship. Jeannie is working on a Master’s degree in Public Administration at Wagner School of Public Service of New York University. She was an assistant to Elliot Sander at DMJM Harris and has followed him to the MTA, where she is a Special Assistant to the Executive Director.

As her independent research topic, Amit Arora studied parking regulations and supply/ demand issues in and around NYMTC’s planning area. This research topic was proposed by the Metropolitan Mobility Network, an advisory working group which advises NYMTC on transportation demand management (TDM) issues in the New York-NewJersey-Connecticut metropolitan region. Amit examined 22 municipalities to understand how parking requirements and policies vary across the region, and gathered information about innovative practices in the region and around the country.

Through the Academic Initiative, Richard Barone worked with Munnesh Patel and Kuo-Ann Chiao of NYMTC’s Technical Group to develop a five part strategy to formalize data management practices at NYMTC. He analyzed data handling practices and developed recommendations for improvements. The end-goal of this project was to develop a regional transportation data repository that could be used by agencies, civic groups and citizens.

For his independent research topic, Xiaoqiang (Jason) Chen examined the relationship between the built environment and time-of-day ridership patterns at subway stations in New York City. He analyzed how these daily activity patterns vary from station to station, and the relationship between these patterns and land uses surrounding the stations. He then developed a method to forecast the time-of-day ridership patterns for subway stations in New York City. His advisors were Dr. Cynthia Chen of The City College of New York, and James Barry of MTA New York City Transit.

Benjamin Reim, the 2007 Student of the Year from UTRC, lived and grew up in Palmer, Massachusetts. He attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to study engineering. From 2001 to 2003, he was unsure on the field of engineering he wished to pursue, however a meeting with his advisor sparked an interest in transportation engineering. In the remaining two years of his Bachelor’s program, he participated in two summer internships with Massachusetts Highway Department and Whiting Turner Contractors. He graduated with a B.S.