ITS Canada Michel Van Aerde Memorial Scholarship for Graduate Study in ITS
2011 Recipient

The Education and Training Committee is pleased to announce the recipient of ITS Canada's Michel Van Aerde Memorial Scholarship for 2011. The award is made through a competitive process to a student registered full-time in a graduate studies program at a Canadian university related to intelligent transportation systems (ITS). In 2011, the recipient will receive $5,000.

Samah El-Tantawy is currently a graduate student studying for a PhD at the University of Toronto. She earned her undergraduate degree and Master of Science degree at Cairo University in Egypt. Her doctoral thesis work is on Neighbourhood Coordination-based Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Integrated Traffic Control.  Her research involves three main phases.  The third phase is in progress now and includes testing the proposed algorithm on a large scale network of about 60 intersections in downtown Toronto that also includes freeway control agents such as ramp metering.
Samah worked as a teaching assistant at the University of Toronto and Cairo University., As well, she is currently involved with the Online Network Enabled – ITS (ONE-ITS) joint project between the University of Toronto and Regina University to develop the adaptive signal control application and the freeway ramp metering control application into the ONE-ITS platform and to test other ITS applications in ONE-ITS platform..   She has co-authored several journal papers, conference presentations and technical reports. She has a clear and focused career goal in the area of  ITS  and has demonstrated an up-to-date understanding and importance of the Canadian ITS Architecture. The Review Committee was impressed with Samah’s academic achievements, her understanding of ITS and her innovative PhD research.

ITS Canada extends congratulations to Samah, and wishes her every success in her graduate studies.

We thank all the candidates who competed for the 2011 award, and invite potential applicants to watch the website for future scholarship opportunities