Please join us in congratulating second year MPL student Arnold Valdez, selected as METRANS 2015 Student of the Year. The Student of the Year honors outstanding students from each University Transportation Center around the country. Arnold traveled to the TRB Annual Conference in Washington D.C. from Saturday, January 9th to Thursday, January 14th, to receive his award. 

“Because of the importance of his research efforts and his exemplary academic record, Metropolitan Transportation University Transportation Center (METRANS) is proud to select Arnold Valdez as its 2015 Outstanding Student of the Year,” the award noted.
 
Arnold Valdez is a first-generation Hispanic college student working toward a Masters degree in Planning at the University of Southern California. Valdez was born in Compton, CA and raised in Nashville, TN. He received a Bachelor's degree in Geography from Brigham Young University, where he met his wife, Laura. His academic interests are in spatial analysis, modeling, and transportation land use dynamics.

Valdez is committed to a career in transportation, and has taken every opportunity to both complete as many transportation courses as possible and also to participate in field trips and professional development activities. He started working for METRANS as a volunteer in 2014. Seeing a need for student engagement and outreach, he proposed a set of student-oriented podcasts, which he now produces for the center.  His employment at the center has now expanded beyond these podcasts, and he is now an active research assistant, working on Freight Efficiency analysis for METRANS Director Genevieve Giuliano and on a recently awarded METRANS research project, The Decline in Inter- and Intra-Urban Mobility and its Impact on Passenger Travel, for Price Professors Gary Painter and Sandip Chakrabarti. 

Arnold is especially skilled in GIS and computer programming, and his talents were also noticed by several additional employers. For the Center for Sustainable Cities, he has managed large datasets on and produced profiles and maps for the Southern California groundwater basin. As an intern at the Southern California Association of Governments, he generated maps for the Regional Transportation Plan. In addition, Arnold is the co-author of two academic papers. His passion is in solving complicated problems that solve space and data. He plans to further his education by pursuing a Ph.D. 

His initial interest in transportation stemmed from his interest in spatial networks, the most common of which are transportation networks. He is most intrigued by freight routes - how goods travel from place to place, as well as the location of transit stations in relation to residential and commercial areas. 

“I’m very grateful and honored to be recognized by METRANS Transportation Center and for being given the opportunity to attend the TRB conference. This experience has solidified my interest in transportation and helped me delve deeper into the transportation research field,” Valdez shared.