Dissertation Grant RFPs

UCTC, with financial support from the U.S. Department of Transportation and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), offers doctoral dissertation grants each year. Students may be from any department or program on the UCTC campuses: Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside, and Santa Barbara.

Applicants must have advanced to candidacy for the Ph.D. degree prior to the application deadline. As the Region 9 University Transportation Center, UCTC’s research mission spans three important, and not unrelated, topics: environmental sustainability, economic competitiveness, and livability. Dissertation proposals are to be in one or more of these focus areas. UCTC’s research focuses on surface (ground) transportation; however, dissertation proposals on air or maritime transportation topics that have significant surface transportation components among the three focus areas will be considered.

Award recipients must provide UCTC with a paper copy and electronic version in PDF of the dissertation when it is completed. They should email the PDF to dissertations@uctc.net. They should mail the hard copy to UCTC’s office address as listed on the UCTC Web site.

Students receiving UCTC fellowships are required to produce a report—either a GSR research product, a capstone thesis or professional report, or a dissertation—on a transportation or transportation-related subject and that is reviewed and approved by faculty advisors. UCTC fellowships must also go toward the completion of a graduate degree or specialization in the transportation field. Failure to satisfy these requirements will result in the forfeiture of this fellowship and necessitate that recipients reimburse UCTC of the full fellowship amount.