The paper which I presented at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting has been chosen to be published in the the Transportation Research Record. The paper, entitled “Levels of Overcrowding in the Bus System of Dhaka, Bangladesh”, was co-authored by my advisor at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology Dr. Md. Mizanur Rahman. This journal is managed by the Transportation Research Board. This is my first paper accepted to be published in a journal.

Besides my three judges, several Georgia Tech students saw my poster and asked questions, as well as two Bangladeshis now living in Atlanta (one a BUET graduate.)

CEE 6605 - Transportation Administration and Policy (Dr. Michael Meyer)
CEE 6631 - Signalized Intersections (Dr. Michael Hunter)
CP 6514 - Introduction to GIS (Dr. Subrahmanyam Muthukumar)
CEE 8812-A - Ph.D Transportation Seminar (Dr. Laurie Garrow)

In addition to these courses, I am taking a 3 credit hour independent study under Dr. Garrow. Together, we are taking new looks at my crowded bus data set from Bangladesh. Our goal is to create a model that can determine the overcrowded level of a bus based on a variety of variables, using techniques I learned in her course last semester on logit models.

Under my advisor Dr. Meyer, I am embarking on my Masters thesis work which will be on airports and megaregion passenger and freight air traffic.

At the end of the semester I will be taking the written portion of the Ph.D Qualifying Exam.

This was my third time attending, and my first one at which I had the chance to present a paper. The paper, titled ”Levels of Overcrowding in Bus System of Dhaka, Bangladesh” was accepted by the Transit Capacity and Quality-of-Service committee of TRB, and presented as a poster in the Transit Quality-of-Service Evaluation session. I had the opportunity to interact with transit design professionals and answer their questions. Additionally, many Bangladeshis came by to observe the poster, and discussed with me my conclusions.

The trip was a great experience, and I particularly liked our stops at the Western Wall, the tunnels below the Western Wall, and floating in the Dead Sea. Having the opportunity to see it all with my sister made the trip even more special.

It was my first season on Georgia Tech Crew. The team’s rowing stroke took some getting used to, but being on the team was a blast and I had the opportunity to race with some great crews.

While applying for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship again, I had the chance to narrow in on my research topic I’ll explore under my advisor Dr. Michael Meyer. My time in the next few years will be spent studying airport systems and how they relate to megaregions.

I’ve uploaded two papers that I wrote this semester to my Writings section. First, my term paper from Traffic Engineering on heterogeneous traffic in developing countries. The second is the final report from Urban Transportation Planning, where we performed a group assessment on parking policies for the BeltLine in Atlanta, an example for implementing these at transit-oriented development.

The visit by Mr. Milton was arranged by one of our professors here at Georgia Tech, Dr. Laurie Garrow. For two hours, we sat around a table (with gourmet cookies at the center) in our lab and had the opportunity to hear about his experiences with the aviation industry. He touched on why certain decisions were made at Air Canada during his tenure there, the airline industry’s current status, and the issues that differentiate legacy and low-cost carriers. We had the chance to ask questions that related to our research here, and get his opinions on the future of airlines in the U.S. and worldwide.

It was my first time interacting with the CEO of an international company of that size, and I was very excited to hear his stories. As a product of our meeting, there looks to be a trip in the works for our lab to visit the Air Canada headquarters in Montreal to meet with the company’s executives next semester. As part of our preparation, we will all likely read Mr. Millton’s book, Straight from the Top. I was glad Mr. Milton spent the time with us, providing us insight on the field in which we are researching.

Yesterday we attended the monthly meeting of the Georgia Section of the Institute of Transportation Engineers for the presentation of our awards. ITE graciously provided us with large novelty checks, my first time ever receiving one of those. Taylor Stukes, the scholarship committee chair and a friend of Georgia Tech’s ITE chapter, graciously drove us back to campus so we didn’t have to walk through downtown Atlanta with giant checks in hand.

I came to Georgia Tech with the intent to earn a dual Masters in Civil Engineering and City &  Regional Planning. Slowly, I began to feel strongly about not pursuing the City & Regional Planning portion of that, and became more enamored with the idea of a stronger education in Civil Engineering. As I began to define what my research topic would be here at Georgia Tech, I realized how I really was going to enjoy delving into the topic, and would not mind a deeper study. I listed out several reasons why it would be good to pursue the Ph.D, and talked them over with my advisor and family.

The List

1. I would be earning the highest degree attainable, reaching the pinnacle of education in my field.
2. I didn’t want to do the dual degree anymore, but still wanted to spend time at the university exploring my field (a single Masters degree would not suffice)
3. Opening up of certain job opportunities.
4. Chance to have more opportunities internationally.
5. I enjoy going to conferences and learning about the frontiers of my field.
6. I get excited about transportation, and enjoy learning and sharing about it.
7. I saw my friends pursuing it elsewhere and I was feeling envy…so clearly I needed to do something about it.

For the past two months, the way I was approaching life at Tech was as if I had already decided to do a Ph.D (e.g. intending to stay with the rowing team for two years…even though a Masters wouldn’t even last that long). I even referred to myself as a Ph.D student once or twice. When I brought it up with my folks weeks after we had first discussed it, my father told me had already thought I’d decided to do it, and even told some of his friends! I just needed to come to terms with it myself, and accept that I’d made this tough decision.

I have. I want to pursue a Ph.D and the idea of it excites me. I’m looking forward to this (longer) journey in graduate school. I’m glad to be at Tech, and feel that this is the place to do it. I feel supported by the staff here, enjoy my interactions with my fellow students, and feel welcomed by the Yellowjacket community. Additionally, as it turns out, I’m not the only one feeling this way. I was told recently that the current group of transportation Ph.D students here is the largest group seen in a long time. It’ll be nice to have the company.

This is the largest transportation conference in the world, lasting for five days. It takes place in January in Washington, D.C., and requires three hotels to hold the conference. It attracts over 10,000 attendees. This year over 3700 papers were submitted. Of those accepted for presentation, about half will be go on to be published in TRB’s journal, the Transportation Research Record. This is my first paper accepted at a U.S. conference, and the first that has a chance to be published in a journal.