UCTC 2009-2010 Student of the Year: Dan Work

November 19—Dan Work has been named the 2009-2010 UCTC Outstanding Student of the Year, UCTC Director Robert Cervero announced.

Work is a PhD student in Systems Engineering in UC Berkeley's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a visiting researcher at Nokia Research Center Palo Alto. He was nominated by Alexandre Bayen, an assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering, with whom he is doing research.

“Dan’s research has focused on monitoring highway traffic in real time using GPS-equipped cell phones,” Bayen noted, adding that “Dan also has been a campus leader and contributor to several peer-reviewed publications.”

Work’s research is on large-scale traffic estimation algorithms using GPS-enabled mobile devices. His algorithms are being implemented in the Mobile Millennium project, the first phase of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s SafeTrip-21 program to significantly advance traffic data collection and traffic information quality.

He has been interviewed about this work in national publications and on NBC. A story with links to audio and video versions of his interviews is here. Another story with links to earlier interviews, including one on National Public Radio, is here.

Work holds an MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley, and a BS in Civil Engineering from the Ohio State University. He received the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Transportation in 2008.

As part of his UCTC award, Work will join other Student of the Year recipients from university transportation centers across the U.S. at a ceremony in January immediately before the annual TRB meeting, which takes place Jan. 10-14, in Washington, D.C.