CEE’s Efthymia Kostopoulou Wins Yet Two More Scholarships from the Boston and Rhode Island Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS)
Content
Ph.D. student Efthymia (Fay) Kostopoulou of the UMass Amherst Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department has received a $4,000 Ann Hershfang Graduate Scholarship from the Boston chapter of the Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS) and a $2,000 Jannet Walker-Ford Leadership Legacy Scholarship from the WTS Rhode Island chapter.
For the last three years in a row, Kostopoulou has also been selected for the $2,000 Helene M. Overly Memorial Scholarship, as presented by the Rhode Island WTS, and in 2022 she received the $4,000 Mary Jane O’Meara Member Graduate Scholarship from the Boston chapter of the WTS. In addition to those influential WTS scholarships, Kostopoulou also earned a NorthEast Passenger Transportation Association Scholarship in 2022.
According to the national website of the WTS, the Ann Hershfang Graduate Scholarship Fund and the Jannet Walker-Ford Leadership Legacy Fund were established “to honor the past, present, and future leaders of the WTS” by awarding annual scholarships to female graduate students pursuing a career in transportation. By supporting and empowering the next generation of female leaders, the funds aim to foster diversity, excellence, and progress in transportation-related fields.
Kostopoulou, whose advisor is CEE Associate Professor Eleni Christofa, is pursuing her Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering from UMass Amherst. Kostopoulou’s research focuses on developing signal-control strategies that account for multiple-user types and performance measures to design an equitable and efficient traffic-management system.
Kostopoulou has also worked on a variety of research projects, including the development of accessibility and fare-equity metrics in communities with race and economic disparities. This research has been carried out in cooperation with the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority and funded by the Federal Transit Administration. In addition, she has worked on measuring accessibility to food services to improve public health and on investigating the effectiveness of bike boxes in Massachusetts. Both those projects were funded by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, where Kostopoulou also worked as a highway engineering intern during the summer of 2022.
In addition, Kostopoulou participated in the so-called “Glow Safely” project, a low-cost safety alternative that lights the path at night for vulnerable road users and has been recognized at UMass Amherst and national entrepreneurship competitions. By using motion-sensor technology and LED lights, Glow Safely enables drivers to spot bicyclists and pedestrians in crosswalks and bike lanes at night.
Kostopoulou has been a member of WTS since January of 2021, vice president of the UMass Amherst WTS Student Chapter for the academic year 2021-2022, and president of that chapter since September of 2022.
Before attending UMass Amherst, Kostopoulou earned her B.Sc. and M.Eng. in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. (March 2024)