Issue link: http://uwashington.uberflip.com/i/903202
2016–2017 PacTrans Fellows One key part of PacTrans' mission is to bring talented professionals into the transportation field. Thus PacTrans provides funding to students seeking transportation-related graduate degrees each year. Jessica Kim Jessica is no stranger to the ailments of traffic congestion being from the Bay Area in Northern California. Upon graduating from San Francisco State University in Civil Engineering, Jessica worked at a structural consulting firm in San Francisco commuting in from Oakland. Her experience utilizing multiple modes to commute has influenced her desire to pursue transportation engineering at the UW with a strong focus on improving bicycle infrastructure, multi- modal transit connectivity, and researching transit-oriented- development models. She has previously worked with Autodesk products and aims to use GIS for sustainable transportation applications. Currently, Jessica interns at Alta Planning and Design gaining a wide-scope of multi-modal projects from concept to design. Aside from work and school, you can most likely find Jessica on her bike or drinking a beverage of sorts. Briana Calhoun Briana is originally from Portland, Oregon and received her Bachelor's degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Oregon. During her studies she focused on Planning, Public Policy and Management courses and fell in love with Transportation management after a bicycling course her Junior year. After graduating she traveled throughout the southern United States and finally made her way back to the northwest to continue her studies pursuing her Masters in Transportation Engineering. She plans to focus on sustainable transportation and mass transit with the goal of reducing the impact transportation has on the environment. On Tuesday June 13th, 2017, a group of around 45 students and staff from Colorado's Educational Talent Search Program came to visit the Smart Transportation Applications and Research Laboratory (STAR Lab) at the University of Washington (UW). The group of outstanding students was taking part on a multi- day college tour to show them about opportunities they may not have been able to afford or experience otherwise and get them interested in college. PacTrans and STAR Lab director, Dr. Wang, and three of his students (John Ash, Zhiyong Cui, and Ruimin Ke) gave the group a brief presentation about exciting opportunities in civil and transportation engineering. The STAR Lab team talked about their work on mobile sensing, traffic monitoring with drones, and big data analytics in transportation. It was a great pleasure to have these wonderful students visit and we hope they find success with their educational pursuits, be they civil engineering related or not. The Colorado's Educational Talent Search Program works with middle, and high school students to help them attend college after graduation. Talent Search assists 6th-12th grade students by providing academic, career, college, and financial aid counseling. Among the many programs offered to Talent Search students are the summer college tours, which take 9th-11th COLORADO'S EDUCATIONAL TALENT SEARCH PROGRAM VISITS PACTRANS' STAR LAB graders to major universities all over the country. Talent Search is primarily geared toward students who: come from a family in which neither parent has completed a four-year college degree, come from a family whose income is limited, are a student who is a US citizen or permanent resident of the US, and are a student who has demonstrated a need for program services in order to pursue the dream of a college education. 31 2014-2015 Annual Report