Rafael Fernandez-Moctezuma
Ph.D. Student, Computer Science, Portland State University
B.S. Computer Systems Engineering, Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, San Luis Pososi, Mexico, 2001
M.S. Computer Science, OGI-OHSU, Portland, Oregon, 2005
Graduate Research Assistant

Rafael was born and raised in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. He received his B.S. in Computer Systems Engineering from ITESM Campus San Luis (2001), and his M.Sc. in Computer Science from OGI-OHSU (2005). He is currently pursuing hs Ph.D. in Computer Science at Portland State University. His interests in database systems, machine learning, and knowledge discovery in databases intersect well with his curiosity in transportation systems. He is currently interested in system state estimation problems found in transportation. He enjoys photography, opera, science fiction, and politics.

Sirisha Kothuri
Ph.D. Student, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State University
MSCE, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 2002
B.Eng., CE, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India, 1999
Graduate Research Assistant

Sirisha was born and raised in Hyderabad, India, where she obtained a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from Osmania University in 1999. She moved to Baton Rouge in Fall of 1999 to pursue a masters degree in Civil Engineering at Louisiana State University majoring in transportation. Her master's thesis dealt with updating a simulated household travel survey using Bayesian methods. Between 2001 and 2002, Sirisha worked as an Assistant Transportation Researcher at the Texas Transportation Institute in Austin, Texas. While at TTI, her work primarily dealt with forecasting travel demand models for the various urban areas in Texas. Sirisha plans to start on her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering in 2006. Currently she is working on travel time estimation algorithms and also assisting with literature review of HOV facilities. Sirisha presented her work at the 2006 ITE Quad Conference in Bellevue, WA. Sirisha received the 2006 ITS Oregon Scholarship. Sirisha is also a recipient of the Oregon Sports Lottery Graduate Scholarship ($2500) and was also selected as the Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering for 2005-06. Sirisha received the 2007 Women's Transportation Scholarship ($2000) in May.

Lynn Peterson
Ph.D. Student, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State University
MURP, Portland State University, Portland, Oregon,
BS, CE, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin,
Graduate Research Assistant

Lynn has a diverse background in transportation and land use integration. She has worked, mainly in the public sector, on every part of planning and implementation of transportation projects; highway design and construction, travel demand forecasting, traffic calming, lobbying at the state and regional levels for transportation funding and transit/land use planning. Lynn was elected to a 4-year term as Lake Oswego City Councilor in November 2002. She finds the combination of school, consultant and councilor challenging but extremely rewarding. For fun, Lynn and her husband, Mark, ski-jour in the winter with their two malamutes and bike in the summer. Lynn was awarded the TransNow Fellowship for 2003-2004 as well as a Center for Transportation Studies Fellowship. In 2004-2005, Lynn was also the recipient of a TransNow Fellowship. Lynn was selected as a recipient of the Maseeh Fellowship for 2005-2006.

Heba Alwakiel
M.S. Student, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State University
B.Sc. Civil Engineering, Ain Shams University, Egypt, 1999
Graduate Research Assistant

Heba's three major interests and passions are civil engineering, traveling and walking. During her traveling and walking trips, reading maps, exploring roads and feeling directions have always fascinated her. As being fond of exploring roads, the first thing that grabbed her attention once she got out from Portland's airport was transportation discipline and streets' planning. From this sustained admiration, her interest in studying transportation systems began to grow and so she decided to pursue her master's degree in transportation. Heba is especially interested in safety issues and congestion problem solving which are major problems in her native country.

Matthew Berkow
Master of Urban and Regional Planning Student, School of Urban Studies & Planning, Portland State University
B.A. Economics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1997
Graduate Research Assistant

Matt grew up in Connecticut, but has lived in Portland since 1998. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997 with a BA in Economics and is currently pursuing a Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) degree at PSU. Matt has been interested in the MURP program for several years, but was finally inspired to study urban planning upon his return from a 10-month cycling trip throughout seven countries in Asia. In the course of observing and experiencing a wide variety of societies and their associated human behaviors, Matt came to understand that the way a society is structured has a huge impact on people's way of life, personal well-being, etc. Seeing transportation issues as being at the crux of many of our culture's challenges, Matt has decided to choose transportation as his field of concentration within the program. He is excited to be a Graduate Research Assistant in the ITS lab, where he is working on using data gathered by TriMet buses to analyze the performance of arterial streets in Portland.

John Chee
M.S. Student, Computer Science, Portland State University
B.S. Computer Science, Portland State University, Portland, OR, 2008
Graduate Research Assistant

John Chee was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. Growing up in Portland he became familiar with both high technology and urban transportation. After finishing his B.S. at Portland State he decided to pursue a M.S. in Computer Science with a focus on databases and programming languages. John works on the PORTAL project and loves to work with scripts and interfaces managing and presenting the massive amount of data the project is collecting. In his free time he likes to play video games, listen to vocal trance, discuss computing and modern religion.

Lisa Diercksen
M.S. Student, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State University
B.S. Civil Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, 2007
Graduate Research Assistant

Lisa is a first year student in the MSCE program at PSU specializing in transportation. While at Iowa State University, she interned for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources in Des Moines, IA; Kimley-Horn and Associates in Phoenix, AZ; and most recently with TranSystems in Kansas City, MO. At TranSystems, Lisa built a travel demand model for Kearney, MO, using VISUM modeling software and also worked on various traffic impact studies. She is excited to be in Portland and hopes to explore the great outdoors of the Northwest!

Oren Eshel
Master of Urban and Regional Planning Student, School of Urban Studies & Planning, Portland State University
B.A. Geography, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California, 1996
Graduate Research Assistant

Oren recently came to Portland from San Francisco, where he most recently managed the Systems Engineering group at San Francisco International Airport. He received his B.A. in Geography from U.C. Berkeley and has been working in information technology for several different industries over the past 10 years. Oren's interest in transportation issues drew him to the MURP program at PSU. He is an avid bicyclist and enjoys gardening, cooking, and spending time in the outdoors.

Enas Fayed
M.S. Student, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State University
B.Sc. Chemical Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt, 2006
Graduate Research Assistant

Enas received her bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering in June 2006 from Cairo University in Egypt where traffic congestion and pollution are big issues to consider. Right after her graduation, she moved with her family to Portland and was impressed with traffic flow smoothness and the direct impact of transportation technologies on the welfare and development of countries. Thereby she decided to pursue her master's degree in transportation and link it to the environment. Her ultimate hope is to eventually take this knowledge back home and make a difference, along with being a good example to other fellows and proving the contributions of women in transportation engineering. In her free time, Enas enjoys playing tennis, hiking, swimming, cooking, gardening and crafts.

Li Huan
M.S. Student, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State University
B.S. Traffic Engineering, University of Architecture and Technology, Xian, China , 2004
Graduate Research Assistant

Huan Li received her master's degree in traffic and transportation planning and management at Beijing Jiaotong University in China. She has worked on inter-city railway and the highway passenger competition projects and then developed an interest in public transit systems from the Beijing regional traffic organization project. For her thesis, she explored an evaluation of design issues for impacts on bus transit operations under the circumstance that the increasing concern for TOD development in China has led to a growing interest in bus transit organization and facility design for improving the efficiency of the limited roadway space in moving a large number of people. Huan's interest in dealing with public transit problems in China drew her to the ITS program at PSU to study the updated technology and methods in the transportation field. She hopes to gain a more extensive view of transportation through working in the ITS Lab at PSU.

Hannah Kapell
Master of Urban and Regional Planning Student, School of Urban Studies & Planning, Portland State University
B.A. Anthropology, Reed College, Portland, OR, 2004
Graduate Research Assistant

Born in Plymouth, Masachusetts, Hannah came to Portland eight years ago for undergraduate study. She spent a semester in Nepal, studying women?s empowerment through natural resource management and wrote her thesis about the Fair Trade coffee movement in modern perceptions of First-Word/Third World identities. She is interested in sustainable transportation issues, particularly bicycle and pedestrian planning. She has been interning at Alta Planning + Design, a planning and landscape architecture firm, where she has been analyzing the results of the Safer Routes to School Program, among other bicycle- and pedestrian-related projects. Hannah spends her free time bicycling, volunteering for democracy, and playing pinball.

Myeonwoo Lim
M.S. Student, Computer Science, Portland State University
B.S. Computer Science, PSU, Portland, Oregon, 2007
Graduate Research Assistant

Myeonwoo Lim was born and raised in Gimcheon, Korea. He transferred to Portland State from Youngdong University in Korea. He completed Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science at PSU. Currently, he's pursuing a M.S. in Computer Science. His interests in network system and database drew him to the ITS lab's project where his knowledge would be applied and expanded.

Maisha Mahmud
M.S. Student, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State University
B.Sc.Civil Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology, Bangladesh, 2004
Graduate Research Assistant

Maisha received her bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET) in February 2004. Right after her graduation she worked as a Research Engineer with Professor Dr. M. Rahman, from the Dept. of Civil Engineering, BUET, on Traffic Impact Assessment of a commercial development project. She also worked as an Assistant Engineer with Engineer's Consultant Bangladesh Ltd. (ECBL) on surface water purification and treatment projects. Maisha started her M.S. specializing in Transportation Engineering at PSU in the fall of 2006. She possesses a keen interest in Traffic Operations and Safety. Maisha enjoys traveling, reading and cooking in her free time.

Rolando Melgoza
M.S. Student, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State University
B.S. Civil Engineering, University of Missouri - Rolla, Rolla, MO, 2007
Graduate Research Assistant

Rolando was born in Kansas City, Missouri and raised in Independence, Missouri. Since the age of five, he has known that he wanted to be an engineer. As an undergraduate, Rolando interned at two companies over the course of three summers. Starting in 2005, he interned for two summers at Water District #1 of Johnson County in Lenexa, Kansas. In 2007 he spent the summer as a traffic engineering intern at Bucher Willis Ratliff Corporation in Kansas City, Missouri. After graduating from UMR, in an old fashioned westward trip, Rolando followed the Oregon Trail from Independence to Oregon to begin his graduate work at Portland State University. He was drawn to Portland because of the progress and attention it has placed on traffic and transportation. Aside from school, Rolando plans on exploring the area. He hopes to go hiking, skiing without injuring himself, and checking out the ocean.

Sandeep Puppala
M.S. Student, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State University
B.Tech. Civil Engineering, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, India, 2006
Graduate Research Assistant

Sandeep was born and raised in Hyderabad, India. He received his Bachelor of Technology Degree in Civil Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in 2006. His interest in the field of Transportation Engineering made him to take up Influence of Kerb Side Bus stops on Mixed Traffic in Urban Areas as his undergraduate Project. In order to continue his quest and explore new areas in the field of Transportation, he is now pursuing his Masters degree at Portland State University.

Leah Tomlinson
M.S. Student, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State University
B.S. Civil Engineering, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, 2002-2007
Graduate Research Assistant

Leah was born and raised in the hills of northwest Arkansas and has just recently moved to Portland to pursue a graduate degree. She is a first year student in MSCE program and is specializing in transportation. She graduated from the University of Arkansas in May of 2007 with her B.S. in civil engineering. While attending school in Arkansas she worked for a small company that designs and manufactures concrete pipe, culverts and other concrete drainage structures. Her original interest in engineering was more environmentally based and it wasn't until her senior year that she realized her interest in transportation. This new found interest sparked a thirst for more knowledge and that is what led her to PSU in pursuit of this degree. She is very excited to be in the Portland area and plans on taking advantage of the vast landscapes that make up the Pacific Northwest.

Jerzy Wieczorek
M.S. Student, Mathematics & Statistics, Portland State University
B.S. Engineering, Olin College, Needham, MA, 2006
Graduate Research Assistant

Jerzy was born in Zielona Gora, Poland, and grew up largely in Sweden, Alaska, and Virginia. After completing his B.S. in Engineering and working as a researcher for a product design firm, Jerzy has returned to school to hone his quantitative skills. He is excited to be working with the ITS Lab and applying his mathematical background to solving practical problems. Jerzy enjoys baking, playing clarinet, and tending to his plot at the PSU community garden.

Michael Wolfe
M.S. Student, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State University
B.A. Mathematics and Physics, Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1996
Graduate Research Assistant

A native Portlander, Michael is returning to higher learning after a ten year hiatus. He received his B.A. in Mathematics and Physics from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and subsequently spent 10 years working on information technology in the health care field. Michael's lifelong love of bicycles led him to an interest in transportation in general, though, and he is excited to be studying Civil Engineering at Portland State, with the ultimate goal of pursuing a personally and professionally rewarding new career in that field. In his spare time, Michael enjoys long-distance bicycling, hiking, gardening, and cooking.

Alex Bigazzi
B.S. Student, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State University
Undergraduate Research Assistant

Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Alex developed an interest in transportation engineering during extended travels around the U.S. and abroad. He studied jazz saxophone at the University of Miami and earned a B.M. in 2001. After touring the East Coast and various other excursions, Alex relocated to Portland where he excels at recreation. Free time finds Alex riding bikes, playing music, and trolling the city for good-natured fun.

Josh Crain
B.S. Student, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State University
Undergraduate Research Assistant

Josh is a junior in Civil Engineering and grew up in a small town on the Oregon coast. He developed an interest in transportation while flying as a loadmaster on C-17A cargo aircraft in the Air Force. Despite having used various forms of public transportation in many cities around the world, Josh has never actually used the public transportation in Oregon.

Chengyu Dai
B.S. Student, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Portland State University
Undergraduate Research Assistant

Chengyu was born in Harbin China, which bears the nickname "ice city" with fantastic annual ice festival in January. Because of her internship with TriMet I-205/Portland Mall MAX Light Rail Project, she developed a great interest in Transportation Engineering. Thereby, she pursues to be transportation engineer. In her spare time, she likes sports, music and reading.

Bandit
Lab Mascot Student, Department of Woof, Dog State University


Bandit is a border collie / lab mix that is sometimes seen around the lab and ITS events. He's a friendly chap but has been know to protect the lab from intruders with his loud bark. So be careful if the "Bandit in Lab" sign is posted. Bandit's favorite activity is fetch and is thinking about enrolling for his third degree - "agility". He spends many of his days with buddies at the "club"