When awarded last year’s internship, Gabrielle O’Grady was a second year master’s student studying Sustainability in the Urban Environment at CCNY. This interdisciplinary program recognizes the various considerations needed to design sustainable and resilient urban infrastructure. Her studies involved coursework in architecture, engineering, science, and social science. She had previously completed her Bachelor of Science degree in biological sciences and chemistry at the University of Connecticut.

Gabrielle aims to use her compassion, analytical skills, and design eye to be a part of New York City’s infrastructure planning. Gabrielle is most interested in helping create designs that are not only aesthetically pleasing, structurally sound, and functional, but are also environmentally responsible, socially conscientious, and accessible to all.

As a September 11th Memorial Program intern at the New York City Department of Transportation in the Transportation Planning and Management Division, Gabrielle worked with the Mobility Management team and key stakeholders to produce the 2021 Mobility Management Resource Guide. This resource guide is a compilation of all accessible transportation information in the New York City region. This guide educates New Yorkers on existing transportation infrastructure, resources, and programs that cater to people with disabilities, older adults, people with limited English proficiency, and low- income populations.

Last Year’s Student Profiles (2019-2020)

When awarded last year’s internship, Yaxin Zhang was a third year Ph.D. student in the Grove School of Engineering at CCNY, with a specialization is transportation. Prior to coming to CCNY, Yaxin completed her undergraduate program at Taiyuan Industrial College in China where she studied polymer materials and engineering. She then received a master’s degree in logistics and operations management from Cardiff University in the UK.

While studying at Cardiff University, Yaxin began to see “connections” that influence transportation performance such as the relationship between growth of e-commerce and traffic congestion. She also realized that awareness of environmental, social, and behavioral science issues is required in order to plan and manage transportation operations.

The understanding of the multiple, connecting issues together with an interest in making things work more efficiently led Yaxin to her current studies at the Grove School where she has been able to apply a variety of research methods, survey techniques, and analytical approaches. Her research area was mainly focused on e-commerce, city logistics, and parking activity in New York City.

Yaxin’s September 11th Memorial Program planning project was titled Analyzing Freight Congestion and Transportation Performance Measures Using National Performance Measurement Research Data Set (NPMRDS). During her internship, she assisted NYMTC staff by using real-time probe data to produce more accurate congestion analyses in the NYMTC planning area. The project focused on the use of NPMRDS, which is used to assess the performance of the nation’s roadways.