For the past four years, UTRC has sponsored an informal internship program for students studying transportation planning and engineering at Ecole Nationale des Travaux Publics de l’Etat (ENTPE), one of the top French engineering schools located in Lyon, France. ENTPE students are required to undertake an internship between their second and third years of graduate study and in 2010, one student, Nhat Bui, contacted then UTRC Director Buz Passwell to inquire whether UTRC could provide an internship for him. That year, Professor Professor Darius Sollohub of the Architecture Department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, agreed to supervise Nhat. From that point on, students have contacted the Center each year to inquire about internships. UTRC agrees to take a student if a PI agrees to supervise the student and has a research topic in which the student can assist. To-date fourteen students have undertaken 20-week internships with UTRC and another three have just begun this year. In addition to Professor Sollohub, supervisors have included Drs. Alison Conway, Kyriacos Mouskos, Anil Yazici, Camille Kamga, Huiming Yin (Columbia), and Zhan Guo (NYU). In addition, Dr. Michel Ghosn of the Department of Civil Engineering at CCNY has also supervised ENTPE interns. Some of these students have even had the opportunity to return to the US to present their work at the Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting in Washington, DC the following January. During their stay in NYC, students are supported by the French government and in return, as civil servants, they are required to work for the French government for eight years. Three students began interning in April 2014. They are Charlotte Gachon, Gaetan Petite, and Benjamin Demont. They are supervised by Michael Bobker, Baruch, Alison Conway, CCNY, and Kyriacos Mouskos, CCNY.

Additional information about their research follows below.

Demont Benjamin

Demont Benjamin is currently a second year master student in the transportation program at the ENTPE which is a national graduate school with specialization in construction, civil engineering, transport and urban planning programs. He is pursuing his degree in transportation and plans to work with the French government after his graduation. During his coursework, he aims to look into different transportation fields and address the system issues to make it more sustainable. During his internship, he will be working under the supervision of Dr Kyriacos Mouskos. He is also working with a Ph.D. student Patricio Vicuna on timing phase application. He is working on a project related to intersection signalization using transportation software tools; VISSIM or SYNCHRO to have an approach on signal timing under an existing arterial road (WOLF Road, Albany). He will compare software results with existing conditions and then optimize signal timing of all Wolf Road’s intersections.

Charlotte Gachon

Charlotte is working at UTRC under the supervison of Michael Bobker, Director of the CUNY Building Performance Lab. She is working on the difference in building codes and standards in Europe and the United States and the different tools for measuring the energy performance. After her graduation, she intends to work for her State as a manager in a building center.

Gaetan Petite

Gaetan Petite is a master student at the University of ENTPE in France, majoring in transportation engineering. Under the supervision of Dr. Alison Conway, Gaetan is working on a project related to freight transportation and parking issues in Manhattan. Gaetan has taken courses in transportation economy, transportation policy, and traffic modeling. He is interested in forecasting traffic issues. As a civil servant, he will work for his state in the French Department of Transportation after his graduation.