One in a series of articles featuring PSR students and their accomplishments.

Eduardo Marino, PhD candidate in the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) at University of California, Irvine (UCI), is an international student from Barcelona, Spain. Marino completed his Civil Engineering degree from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) in Barcelona, Spain. He is currently in his third year of the PhD program, and expects to complete his studies in the next two years.

Marino was born in Santander, a relatively small city along the northern coast of Spain.  As a child he moved to Barcelona, in a population concentration of nearly 5 million, and lived most of his there life before moving to Southern California for his PhD program. Before joining the program, Marino worked as research assistant at several universities and also had the opportunity to study in Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen (RWTH) University, Erasmus Program in Aachen, Germany as an exchange student and in Madison, Wisconsin on a summer research program. At RWTH University, he worked on a model to generate and stimulate tanks that could hold different liquids in different conditions and how they can resist the effect of earthquakes.

Marino is currently specializing in the applications and impacts, present and future, of emerging technologies such as autonomous vehicles (AVs) and is working on a project for the stimulation of transportation in Irvine, California. For that project, Marino is learning to code, mainly in Python. He is also interested in the economic aspects of the project and the importance of behavior in transportation. Marino shared that these experiences were essential and helped him to be learn and learn from new and different ideas from diverse nationalities and backgrounds.

Marino shared that he firmly believes that there is an abundance of opportunities available and the key to success to become aware of and take advantage of them.  Some of his goals are to continue to develop his coding skills and to further his experience with an internship at a transportation company. Apart from his various career experiences, Marino shared his love for travel and sports, “I like to travel and to see different and new things. I enjoy playing almost any sport especially soccer or basketball. I also like music and I enjoy playing the piano”.

Marino advises students to "get a good mentor that can guide you well, don’t be afraid of asking, focus on the classes that interest you more and speak with the professor about any projects to help or be more involved with them, try to find what is that you like the most and get into that, read a lot to have an idea of what is happening in the world every day, and always have a look at any opportunity that appears”. He desires to have an academic path of an academic either in the United States or work in the transportation industry and wants to explore his options in the United States or work in his home country. We see great things for him in the future!