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PRESS RELEASE: ITS Canada Announces 2020 ITS Essay Winners
Posted by: ITS Canada

August 24th, 2020

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ITS Canada Announces 2020 ITS Essay Winners

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario, August 24, 2020- The Intelligent Transportation Society of Canada (ITS Canada) is pleased to announce the 3 winners of the 2020 ITS Essay Competition.

2020 marks the 3rd year of the Essay Competition. This competition promotes the ITS expertise, experience and interests of young researchers from Canadian Universities.

“ITS Canada is thrilled to recognize the 2020 winners. For this third edition of ITS Essay Competition, several members of the evaluation committee highlighted the excellence of the submitted papers. Overall, these essays demonstrate the quality of ITS research work relative to participating institutions as well as having good potential for future ITS professionals,” says Prof. Ilham Benyahia, Chair of the Academic Advisory Committee.

Submissions were received on themes such as Transportation Efficiency for CAV Technologies , Emerging Technologies for Future Transport Systems, Decision Process for Dynamic Deployment of Shuttle Services, Transport Network Assessments for CAV Deployment, Automatic and Smart License Plate Recognition, CAVs, Sustainable Forms of Transportation and Real Time Tracking Technologies.

Essays were reviewed and scored by an expert of judges and in the end the following students were awarded:

Winner: Maged Gouda, University of Alberta
“Eliminating barriers to connected/autonomous vehicles (CAV) technologies: how to assess the readiness of existing infrastructure”

Maged receives a cash prize of $2,000 and he will be invited to present his winning essay in person at ITS Canada 2021, June 20-23 in Edmonton.

Second Prize: Alaa Itani, University of Toronto
“Decision support tool for deploying shuttle buses during major rail disruptions. A case study of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC)”

Alaa receives a cash prize of $1,000.

Third Prize: Seyed Mehdi Meshkani, Ryerson University
“A distributed ridehailing system in a CAVs environment (abstract)”

Seyed received a cash prize of $500.

Essays served as an intersection between academia and real-world transportation issues; and submissions were adjudged to be of high-quality and relevant to ITS industry. ITS Canada congratulates all award recipients!

About ITS Canada

ITS Canada is a not-for-profit, national association which focuses on Intelligent Transportation Systems. We are the hub for mobility technologies. We support mobility technologies through championing the benefits, fostering and promoting innovation, integrating the expertise, products, and services of our members and enabling communication for learning and collaboration. Our members include all levels of governments, private sector companies, academic institutions, and other associations.

For further information, please contact Janneke van der Zee, Managing Director, ITS Canada, (905) 593-0947, janneke@itscanada.ca.

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