C2SMART has chosen Alex Curtis, a master’s student at New York University in Transportation Planning and Engineering, as its 2019 Outstanding Student of the Year. The annual award recognizes a student from one of C2SMART’s consortium member schools, as chosen by the Center’s executive leadership committee.

Curtis completed a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Mathematics (minor) in 2017 at Columbia University. Curtis works as Research Assistant at the C2SMART center and focuses on consumer vehicle repair order data and completing a master’s thesis in the meta-analysis of reliability engineering techniques applying survival models to predict failure event type and degradation. Curtis is currently nearing the end of his MS in Transportation Planning and Engineering and seeks to continue work at the intersection of technology and the transportation space, or technology and the government and planning spaces more broadly.

The award includes a prize of $1,000 and a certificate from USDOT, as well as covering costs to attend the 2020 TRB Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. The Student of the Year is selected based on accomplishments in three areas: technical merit and research capability, academic performance, and leadership.