Doctoral candidates of the Kontou Research Group, Shanshan Liu and Denissa Purba, were recognized by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) with Future Industry Leader Spotlight Awards! Congratulations to these emerging scholars and future transport industry leaders!
Shanshan Liu also received the 2023 Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship for Sustainable Transport and Energy Efficiency! Shanshan’s research will examine the potential of electric school buses to supply backup power to resilience hubs (community shelters) during power outage events in the U.S. Electric school buses have the potential to function as power sources and through Vehicle-to-Building technology, can supply backup power directly to buildings during power outages. Shanshan will evaluate the resilience benefits of electric school buses by simulating the energy use profiles (e.g., heating, cooling, air conditioning) and other loads (e.g., lighting, refrigeration) for the resilience hubs in nine climate regions in the U.S. Please find the announcement by the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations and the World Resources Institute in the following links, respectively: https://vref.se/lee-schipper-scholarship/ and here.
The department of Civil and Environmental Engineering covered their win here: 
Denissa Purba, a first-year PhD student of the Kontou research group, won one of the WTS Greater Chicago Chapter Executive Partners Scholarship. Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS) promotes, encourages, and supports women in the transportation profession. The announcement can be found 
PhD students of the Kontou research group received 2 out of the 3 awards of the INFORMS OR/MS Tomorrow PhD-level mini poster competition! Denissa Purba received the 1st place award by presenting her UIUC research on alternative fuel vehicles evacuation planning and Xi Cheng received the honorable mention recognition for his research work conducted as a MSc student at UC Berkeley. Find out more here: