news@lboro (2009)
2012
PhD student wins Smeed Prize
February 7, 2012
Jessica Van-Ristell, a PhD student from the School of Civil and Building Engineering, has been awarded the coveted Smeed prize for best student paper at the Universities’ Transport Study Group Conference.
Jessica is the first Loughborough student to win the prestigious Smeed award.
The 44th annual conference, this year held in Aberdeen, aims to promote transport teaching and research and to act as a focus for those involved in these activities in UK and Ireland universities. Irum Sanaullah, a PhD student from the same School, was also ‘highly commended’.
The Smeed prize, which includes a submission of the contender’s paper and a presentation by the author, hopes to recognise student papers that make a significant contribution to their field of research.
Jessica’s paper, titled 'Modelling the Effects of Changing Local Authority Funding Criteria for Home to School Public Transport Provision', examines and evaluates the British Government’s school travel funding and policies that costs local authorities in England over £1 billion a year.
She is currently working on a Knowledge Transfer Account (KTA) project with Transport Consultants, JMP, which is jointly funded by them and the EPSRC via Loughborough Enterprise Office.
The aim of the project is to develop a research tool (based on the findings from her PhD) so that local authorities can measure the impact of various home-to-school transport policies.