Donald Katz

The Georgia Tech Civil and Environmental Engineering Department’s newsletter included a writeup about the four NSF Graduate Research Fellowships recipients in the transportation group this year. The other three students besides myself are all in my graduate office: Brent Weigel, J.P. O’Har, and Brittany Luken. The article also congratulates the other two students in our transportation group who received an Honorable Mention: Tom Wall and Josie Kressner (my desk mate).

This past week was the Ph.D Written Comprehensive Exam for the transportation engineering group. The four day test was intended to measure our ability to think through transportation problems, evaluate our ability to develop a research idea, and assure we have the technical abilities to proceed with the Ph.D program. Overall, there was a significant amount of writing to do, over 75 pages in four days.

I will receive the results of the test sometime this summer. If passed, the next step in the process will be the Ph.D Oral Exam, which I plan to take this coming autumn.

Last week was the final meeting of the school year for the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Georgia Tech student chapter. Our chapter recently won Chapter of the Year for the Southern District (composed of 9 states) as well as the Traffic Bowl competition at the SDITE Annual Meeting. It was the first time in many years that Clemson had not garnered both honors. Our chapter advisor, Dr. Michael Hunter, congratulated the chapter on our accomplishments, and cut a cake in honor of our efforts.

At the meeting, fellow student Andrew Vischio and I presented a humorous yet important research effort that highlighted the travel efficiency between the building which holds our graduate offices and the building in which we have our classes. The presentation, although intended to make others laugh, was in fact an actual research endeavor with about 6 hours of data collection, and a structured conceptual framework.

Lastly, part of the meeting was an election for next year’s leadership. All positions were run for unopposed, but nevertheless, I will serve as the chapter’s Vice President of Outreach in 2010-2011.

I received notice this past week from the National Science Foundation that I earned a fellowship in this year’s Graduate Research Fellowship competition. This was the second year I applied; I received an Honorable Mention in 2009. I will be using the fellowship for my Ph.D work at Georgia Tech.

A new page for the website is now up. Over the past couple of months I slowly put together a sort of rowing resume, listing out the clubs I have been a part of, coaches I’ve rowed under, and leadership roles I have served. I may add in the results of each race at some point, but for now only the regatta names are listed. Finally the “rower” part of the title of my blog is represented on the site. There is a link to this section on the sidebar.

In December of last year, Robert Milton visited our research group at Georgia Tech. As the former CEO of Air Canada, he arranged for us to travel to Montreal and spend a day at Air Canada’s headquarters.

During our recent visit, we met with the Vice President of Network Planning and the Vice President of Revenue Management. In the early part of the day our advisor Dr. Garrow presented to Air Canada employees the research we are doing at Georgia Tech. We spent the rest of they day discussing with staff members how Air Canada is making decisions in the areas of route planning, pricing, and resource allocation, gaining an understanding of how the airline functions.

Update: An article I wrote on the trip was posted on the GTI/UTC website and through Georgia Tech’s CEE Newsletter.

This past week I presented a version of my paper “Levels of Overcrowding in the Bus System of Bangladesh” at the Georgia Tech Research and Innovation Conference. The conference is put on by the Student Government Association and is hosted in the Georgia Tech Hotel. 300 posters were up by graduate students from all departments at Georgia Tech. Each poster was judged independently by three judges from a variety of fields; it seemed each judge chose which posters they wanted to view.

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.)

My graduate studies are now in their second semester at Georgia Tech. This semester I am taking the following courses, the first of which is required for my curriculum.  They are listed below along with the instructors’ names.

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.

Along with the Georgia Tech chapter of ITE, I attended the Transportation Research Board’s 89th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. from January 10-14. Over 10,000 transportation professionals, educators, and students attend this conference which is held in three hotels along Connecticut Avenue (Marriot, Omni Shoreham, and Hilton).

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.