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Scholarships
WTS - Heart of Texas Chapter is pleased to announce this year's scholarship winners: Helene M. Overly Memorial Scholarship Application (graduate) - $2,000 awarded to: Lauren Gardner from the University of Texas at Austin 
Lauren Gardner graduated with a B.S. in Architectural Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2006, and a M.S.E. in transportation from UT Austin in 2008, with a Thesis entitled "Solution Methods for Robust Pricing for Transportation Networks Under Demand Uncertainty". She is currently a second year PhD student at UT Austin (and by now officially bleeding burnt orange), working under Dr. Travis Waller in the area of network modeling. Her research incorporates a variety of interdisciplinary applications spanning transportation engineering and economics to epidemic outbreaks and social networks. Some research topics include (1) congestion pricing models accounting for uncertainty and the role of real-time information, (2) exploring the use of auctions for privately funded transportation projects, specifically how auction design can be used to maximize welfare when network conditions are uncertain, and most recently (3) evaluating cascading failures in infrastructure network systems, including the effect of localized disruptions on the network system as a whole. Outside of her coursework Lauren participates in various programs geared towards educating undergraduate and minority students in graduate research opportunities in engineering. In the free time that remains she loves to travel, paint, scuba dive, play poker, and watch college football. After narrowing down her research interests into a feasible dissertation topic and graduating, she hopes to remain in academia as a professor. Lauren is a recipient of the Eisenhower Fellowship. Elaine Dezenski – President’s Legacy Scholarship Application (graduate)- $2,000 awarded to: Katharine Kortum from the University of Texas at Austin 
Katherine grew up in Pittsburgh and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 2006. She spent two years working as an EIT for Halff Associates in Austin, where she designed drainage systems, developed new horizontal and vertical roadway alignments, created traffic control plans, designed land development projects, and re-delineated FEMA floodplains for several counties in Texas. In 2008, she returned to full-time graduate school at the University of Texas. Having completed her master's degree in transportation engineering in 2009, with a thesis focusing on carsharing in the Austin area, she is now working towards her PhD. Sharon D. Banks Memorial Undergraduate Scholarship Application - $1,000 awarded to: Sehin Faris from the New Mexico Tech University 
Sehin Faris was born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. She completed mid school and graduated high school before coming to the United States. One of the primary reasons she came to the United States was for the quality of college education she would be able to receive. After coming to the US, Sehin went to New Mexico Highlands University to study computational Engineering. But, after two years of her tenure there, the department was selected for termination, so Sehin had to find a school to transfer into. Looking at all colleges in New Mexico, she decided to attend the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. After having transferred to NMT, she is currently studying Civil Engineering with emphasis on structure. Sehin thanks God for what he has helped her through and how far he has brought her in her everyday walks of life. Ann Irwin Leadership Scholarship Application (undergraduate) - $1,000 awarded to: Ana Davila from the University of Texas at Austin 
Ana is from Brownsville, Texas, a small town neighboring the Mexican border. She is the eldest of four children and grew up in a tight-knit-zero-privacy and loud home. Living in a predominantly Hispanic region made it easy to grow up with strong cultural ties to her Mexican heritage, learning Spanish as a first language and having the ease to visit her extended family in Mexico throughout her youth. Ana attended Austin’s University of Texas School of Architecture to pursue a Bachelor of Architecture, a field that encompassed her broad range of interests, particularly her love for numbers, creative thinking, and the arts. As part of the five year curriculum, Ana had the opportunity to take on an internship and found a position with Jacobs, a firm that provides a wide range of construction and consultation services. She joined the San Antonio office for seven months and started working on architectural and engineering designs, but it wasn’t long before she found herself deeply involved with a transit planning and analysis project for the City of El Paso. The majority of her seven month tenure was consumed designing lane configurations for the implementation of dedicated bus lanes throughout El Paso’s street arterials as well as analyzing and reporting on potential route alignments for the proposed Bus Rapid Transit system. It was during this time that Ana realized how much transit projects required the similar creative and analytical thinking that she had developed while pursuing her architectural education; it was something that captivated her attention. After graduating in December 2009, Ana accepted an offer to join the Jacobs team as a full-time employee. She continues to work on transit projects and is anxious to continue learning and taking on the adventures the field has to offer. Congratulations to our 2010 scholarship winners!
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