Assignment Announcement for GRF.docx

DWIGHT DAVID EISENHOWER TRANSPORTATION FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM

2018 GRANTS FOR RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP (GRF)

DWIGHT DAVID EISENHOWER

TRANSPORTATION FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM (DDETFP)

ASSIGNMENT ANNOUNCEMENT

FOR

GRANTS FOR RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP (GRF)

2018 AWARD CYCLE (FEBRUARY 2018)

These guidelines are in effect until further notice and were prepared for participation in the DDETFP GRF. Earlier versions do not apply for this award cycle.

Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program (DDETFP) Grants or Research Fellowship (GRF) Assignment Announcement for Fiscal Year 2018

Attachment to Notice of Funding Opportunity number 693JJ318NF5229

TABLE OF CONTENTS

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

· Applicants are students seeking a DDETFP GRF. If selected:

· Students will be referred to as “Student Designees” and “Fellows”

· The Institution of Higher Education (IHE) the student is attending will be referred to as the “Recipient”

· Applicants will be required to provide necessary documents for a background check before starting proposed project assignment at a USDOT facility. Applicants will not be selected for award if they do not pass the background check.

· Reimbursements of IHE administrative or overhead costs are prohibited.

· The DDETFP GRF requires online submission through www.grants.gov.

· Paper applications will not be accepted.

· By submitting an application, applicants certify that they have read and meet eligibility criteria defined in the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) and the respective DDETFP GRF Annual Announcement.

· Endorsement letter from Faculty Advisor is required.

· The IHE in which the student is enrolled in must be accredited by a federally-recognized accrediting agency and must be located within the United States or its territories, both administratively as well as the campus the student is attending.

· Applicants should print a copy of their application and the NOFO for their files. The IHE may request these items if Fellowship is awarded.

· The proposed projects that are available for student applications are listed in this assignment announcement.

· Only one type of DDETFP Fellowship may be awarded to a Student Designee in each award cycle.

STUDENT ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

This funding opportunity is open to students that are U.S. citizens and non-U.S. citizens. The students must be enrolled in an IHE which must be accredited by a federally-recognized accrediting agency[footnoteRef:1] and must be located within the United States or its territories, both administratively as well as the campus the student is attending. [1: The U.S. Department of Education publishes a list of nationally recognized accrediting agencies on https://www.ed.gov/accreditation]

Current U.S. Department of Transportation employees are not eligible for the DDETFP.

In addition to the Program Office prerequisites stated in the assignment announcement, all student applicants of the DDETFP GRF must:

· Possess a baccalaureate degree from an accredited IHE within the U.S or its territories;

· Demonstrate confirmation of acceptance in a graduate degree program at an accredited IHE in the U.S. or its territories;

· Be enrolled in an accredited IHE within the U.S. or its territories;

· Be pursuing a graduate degree in a full-time program in a transportation-related discipline identified in the assignment announcement;

· Have at least one full academic year remaining in program of study;

· Conduct ongoing research in one or more transportation-related disciplines; and

· Plan to enter the transportation profession after completing their higher-level education.

Non-U.S. citizens must also submit a valid copy of their Student and Exchange Visitor Information System Form issued by the IHE the student is enrolled in, or the Form I-20[footnoteRef:2] “Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant Status”, or the Form I-551 “Permanent Resident Card” issued by the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service. [2: Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) Form I-20 is a Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant Student Status for foreign exchange students who attend an educational program in the United States. Educational institutions issue Form I-20.]

Applications without this information will not be considered complete.

DDETFP GRF APPLICATION PACKAGE

The DDETFP GRF requires the submission of a complete Application Package through www.grants.gov in response to one of the assignments posted this announcement.

General Instructions: Please read the NOFO and this announcement in their entirety before preparing the application materials.

A complete DDETFP GRF application package includes the following:

· Individual SF 424 (available through www.grants.gov)

· Completed Student File Information Sheet

· Personal statement: Narrative of relevant background and future goals

· Project experience: Narrative of relevant personal project specific experience

· Transcripts are required from all institutions in which a degree was obtained

· Applicant must provide official transcripts from institutions

· Applicant must certify that the electronic transcripts have not been modified

· Endorsement letter from the applicant’s Faculty Advisor regarding the applicant's qualifications for the project specific assignment.

· Resume / Curriculum Vitae (Not to exceed two pages)

· Citizenship status

· Non-U.S. citizens must provide a valid copy of current Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) Form I-20 issued by the educational institution attending or Form I-20 “Certificate of Eligibility for Nonimmigrant Status", or Permanent Resident Card Form I-551 issued by the USCIS.

Incorrect, missing documents/items, or incomplete applications are grounds for rejecting the application.

EVALUATION CRITERIA

The DDETFP GRF applications will be reviewed by the sponsoring Program Office. Fellowships will be awarded on the basis of merit. Merit includes (in descending order of importance with the top three criteria being equal in importance)

· Experience in research area identified in the proposed project announcement

· Unique qualifications for the proposed project described in the announcement

· Academic record: Class standing and grade point average

· Recommendation regarding the applicant's qualifications: Caliber of Faculty Advisor endorsement of applicant's qualifications related to project requirements in the announcement

· Potential for outstanding career in transportation: Demonstration of applicant's potential through personal statements summarizing long-range professional goals in transportation, including transportation work experience (if applicable).

TENURE

· The length of assignment (“Period of Performance”) may range from 3 to 12 months depending on the assignment

· Student Designees are eligible for funding only during the months of full-time enrollment in graduate degree programs and during on-site research projects or internships with approved transportation agencies.

· During the tenure of the award, the Student Designee must maintain satisfactory academic performance as established by the IHE.

FUNDING

The fellowship, if applicable, may cover tuition, fees, and/or program-related expenses. All student designees may not receive a full award (i.e. tuition, stipend, and travel to the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting). Fellowship awards will be based on selection for assignment and available funding.

The anticipated stipends for the DDETFP GRF are based on academic level and shall be calculated as follows:

Monthly Stipend

Actual stipend level may vary based upon IHE formal policy and available funding. Additional stipend amounts may be added by the IHE or other sources.

· Student designees are advised that the stipend portion of the award is taxable[footnoteRef:3] [3: 3 Refer to the Internal Revenue Service Publication 970 – Tax Benefits For Education ]

· All program-related expenses must be supported by receipts/invoices

· All unused funds must be returned to the FHWA within 90 days of the conclusion of the agreement.

TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH BOARD (TRB) ANNUAL MEETING

Student Designees will be provided a one-time expenditure (up to $1,500) for travel to Washington, D.C. to attend the TRB Annual Meeting held January. Attendance at the TRB Annual Meeting is mandatory. Failure to meet this requirement will result in loss of funding designated for this activity.

The Student Designees are responsible for arranging travel and hotel accommodations following IHE travel policy to obtain the most cost-efficient rates. Registration is to be completed by logging on to www.trb.org. In addition to attendance at TRB, it is also required that students attend ALL DDETFP Research Showcase events. All students should plan to arrive by Sunday morning, and leave after the Networking Reception on Tuesday evening. If students have other commitments (i.e., presentations or poster sessions) during TRB they must notify the FHWA U&GP staff in advance to be excused from the Showcase session that conflicts with the event they would like to attend. Faculty Advisors are responsible for students securing per diem for their trip.

Student Designees may be requested, regardless of funding level, to submit an abstract of their research (or proposed research) for review and consideration for presentation at TRB. The abstract shall be submitted by the Student Designees (with a copy to their Faculty Advisor) to FHWA U&PG at FHWA_UGP@dot.gov as indicated in the request. The FHWA U&GP will notify Student Designees if their abstract was selected for presentation. Student Designees selected for TRB presentation will be required to deliver a 10 to 15-minute presentation describing their research project at the TRB Annual Meeting.

PROJECT REQUIREMENTS

· Student Designee shall prepare project specific assignment deliverables as indicated in the proposed project announcement.

· The results of all research will be the property of FHWA and a copy must be made available to FHWA and can be used on an unlimited, royalty-free basis.

· GRF Student Designee shall prepare a thesis/dissertation or research paper for submission to the Program Office and the U&GP Program Manager. The Program Office will work with the IHE to ensure a year-end report is submitted.

PRIVACY ACT STATEMENT

The information is required under the authority of the Privacy Act of 1974, as amended and Title 49 U.S.C. 332(b) (3) (4) (5). Your request cannot be processed unless all required data is submitted. Disclosure of your race and ethnicity are optional. Refusal to furnish your race and/or ethnicity will not result in the denial of any right, benefit or privilege provided by law. Records maintained in the system are routinely used to determine eligibility/qualifications for fellowships, and for program evaluation and analysis purposes.

U&GP CONTACT INFORMATION

Universities and Grants Programs Center for Transportation Workforce Development Federal Highway Administration 1310 North Courthouse Road, Suite 300 Arlington, VA 22201

Web Site:

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/innovativeprograms/centers/workforce_dev/ E-mail:

693JJ318NF5229

693JJ318NF5229

STUDENT FILE INFORMATION SHEET

Application MUST be typed and included as attachment through www.grants.gov

STUDENT NAME

ANNOUNCMENT PROJECT TITLE

RACE (optional) American Indian Alaskan Native Asian African/African American Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander White Other ETHNICITY (optional) Hispanic or Latino Not Hispanic or Latino Hispanic or Latino in Puerto Rico Not Hispanic or Latino in Puerto Rico

Check one box and place X to indicate your status as of September 1st of the application year:

Masters Doctoral ___ 1st Year ___ 1st Year ___ 3rd Year ___ 2nd Year ___ 2nd Year ___ 4th Year

Academic Department

Applicant’s Field of Study (i.e. Traffic Studies, Physical Planning)

Faculty Advisor Name:

Title:

Telephone No.:

E-mail Address:

Technical Advisor (For FHWA Use Only) Name:

Title:

E-mail Address:

STUDENT APPLICATION CONTENT CHECKLIST

Complete Student File Information Sheet SF 424 Individual Application Essays Personal Statement: Should include relevant background and future goals. Please outline your educational and professional development plans as well as your career goals. Describe how your education will prepare you for a career in transportation (Limit 8000 characters).

Project Experience: Describe your unique qualifications for the project. Incorporate educational, personal and work experiences, and accomplishments that substantiate your qualifications. Please propose how you would obtain the identified outcome. (Limit 8000 characters).

Endorsement Letter from Faculty Advisor Official Transcripts

Transcript from institution that awarded bachelor’s degree

Transcript from institution that awarded bachelor’s degree

Transcript from institution that awarded master’s degree

*Individuals applying must possess a baccalaureate degree from an Institution of Higher Education (IE) which must be accredited by a federally-recognized accrediting agency and must be located within the United States or its territories, both administratively as well as the campus the student attended.

NARRATIVE RESPONSE: PERSONAL STATEMENT

Personal Statement Include relevant background and future goals to outline your educational and professional development plans as well as your career aspirations. Describe how your education will prepare you for a career in transportation.

(Limit 8000 characters)

NARRATIVE RESPONSE: PROJECT EXPERIENCE

Project Experience Please propose how you would obtain the identified proposed project outcome. Describe your unique qualifications for the project. Incorporate educational, personal and work experiences, accomplishments that substantiate your qualifications. (Limit 8000 characters)

Proposed Project Assignment Announcement(s) Please include title of the Proposed Project Announcement for which you are applying in your application.

TITLE OF PROJECT: NEW METHODS FOR HIGHWAY DATA ANALYSIS

DESCRIPTION OF ASSIGNMENT:

TITLE OF PROJECT: NEW METHODS FOR HIGHWAY DATA ANALYSIS

DESCRIPTION OF ASSIGNMENT:

This project is for developing new methods for highway data analysis. The data analysis tasks include:

1. using artificial intelligence (AI) to develop a more effective data analysis tool;

2. using the new tool to test several TMC operations tasks, including quick incident detection, traffic congestion prediction (bottleneck location, queue length, etc.).

To detect and verify an incident early has been a great challenge over several decades, and the prediction of traffic congestions has also been a great challenge for TMC operations. Now with the new data provided by CVs, and the improved AI application software on market, and also the much improved computing power at TMCs, there is a good opportunity to significantly reduce the incident detection time and congestion predictions, which would have great benefit in TMC operations.

This research is a team effort, and the student will be a team member for the data analysis task.

ACADEMIC CREDITS: To be negotiated

OUTPUTS/PRODUCTS:

Data analysis outcome to indicate significant benefits from the developed data analysis tool.

Coauthor of project report and the publications in professional journals, including TRB paper, and Transportation Research Part C.

TITLE OF PROJECT: DEVELOPING META-MODELS FOR EFFICIENTLY EXPLORING TRANSPORT ISSUES

DESCRIPTION OF ASSIGNMENT:

Since the earliest metropolitan area studies, transportation planning agencies have used predictive planning to evaluate a set of candidate policies and projects for deployment over a multi-decade period. The forecasts these studies rely upon have been based on deterministic models employed for developing single point estimates of the future contingent on a small set of stable assumptions and system performance targets. This approach has supported the development of a national highway infrastructure that is largely complete.

Emerging transport technologies and planning interest in new economic, environmental and behavioral trends have greatly complicated planning goals. What little data we have on effects of these new factors on the transportation system suggest that additional large social and economic changes may lie ahead, resulting in significant uncertainty about future needs for moving people and goods, and about how best to address those needs. Models are increasingly being asked to test a wide range of future possibilities and to do so rapidly and flexibly. Methods that support rapid exploration of urban system constraints, plausible transport outcomes, and the potential consequences of projects, programs, and policies are all needed to inform transport policy and investment decisions.

These requirements are spurring a shift from “predictive” models (where the future can be delineated precisely, and project effects can be extrapolated from observations of existing behavior) to “exploratory” models that are intended to assess a wide range of possible decisions against a spectrum of plausible assumptions, and to do so with limited observational data.

Even though the data available on new technologies and behaviors is limited, many elements of existing behaviors and technology have been modeled in great detail. However, it is impractical to reconfigure these models to address the very wide range of future scenarios that are under consideration in contemporary transport planning, and in many cases there is no obvious way to code the future scenarios into them even if resources were available to do so. Yet these models do contain a wealth of valuable information related to physical and behavioral possibilities and constraints on future outcomes.

An emerging approach to take advantage of the detailed knowledge that is available while retaining flexibility and transparency in considering future scenarios is to develop “surrogate” or “meta-models” that render the dynamics of the detailed models in a simplified form that allows rapid and efficient exploration of alternate scenarios by reducing the burden of coding input scenarios and the overall runtime required. Such models also provide a mechanism to propagate the outcomes of complex system models into flexible planning models that can themselves explore assumptions about a broader range of phenomena, including many for which we still have insufficient data and experience to develop detailed models.

The goal of this project is to advance exploratory modeling concepts for transport planning through the development and demonstration of new surrogate models that can support a wide range of input scenarios, and that can support strategic planning models such as VisionEval (http://VisionEval.org). These surrogate models will be based on existing and emerging simulation models such as those developed in the Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2). Application of the surrogate model results to strategic models such as VisionEval (http://VisionEval.org) will be considered in the design of the surrogate models, and this project may implement proof-of-concept modules for using these surrogates in the VisionEval framework.

· Qian et al, “Building surrogate models with detailed and approximate simulations”, ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, 128 , 668-677.

· S. W. Popper, R. J. Lempert, S. C. Banks, Shaping the Next One Hundred Years, RAND 2003 ISBN 0-8330-3275-5 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266099200_Shaping_the_Next_One_Hundred_Years_New_Methods_for_Quantitative_Long-Term_Policy_Analysis

· Steven Banks, Exploratory Modeling for Policy Analysis, Operations Research, March 1993. https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.41.3.435

ACADEMIC CREDITS: To be negotiated

OUTPUTS/PRODUCTS: The deliverables of this project will include:

1. Development and testing of surrogate models that reflect key changes in travel behaviors or transport impacts based on changes in relevant independent variables in detailed simulation models. Proposed surrogate models should consistent with the structure and conceptual models found in VisionEval.

2. Demonstration of surrogate models in an existing collaborative modeling project such as VisionEval for a relevant transportation planning application preferably in partnership with a planning agency.

These efforts will be documented in two or more technical papers suitable for publication in a technical journal. In addition, the student will prepare and deliver briefs to discuss approach and results for both products (two each for a total of four presentations). This research will be useful to agencies engaged in scenario planning, researchers interested in surrogate models, and the communities involved with collaborative modeling projects.

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