MPC
MPC Student Earns Intermountain ITE Honors

Posted: Jul 13, 2020

University of Utah Transportation Engineering Ph.D. Student Zhiyan Yi recently received two honors from the Intermountain Section of the Institute of Traffic Engineers.

Yi was awarded one of two 2020 Ellis L. Mathes Scholarships given by the section. The scholarship is awarded to undergraduate or graduate students in the Intermountain Section area (Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Utah) enrolled in engineering curricula with a transportation emphasis. The main criteria for selection are career goals, academic record, work experience, and activities in the student ITE chapter.

Yi also received the Best Paper Award for "Statewide Hourly Traffic Volume Estimation via XGBoost – a Scalable Tree Boosting System." He presented the paper as a poster at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in January. The paper was selected by a review committee based its content, level of research effort, applicability to the transportation engineering profession, and the author's technical writing skills.

Yi, a graduate research assistant at the University of Utah, is expected to earn his Ph.D. in 2022. He holds a master's degree in transportation science and engineering from Beihang University in Beijing, China.