As of October 1, 2016, the SWUTC concluded its 28 years of operation and is no longer an active center of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. The archived SWUTC website remains available here.

2011 SWUTC Robert Herman Award for Most Outstanding Student

Rajesh Paleti Selected to Receive 2011 Robert Herman Award

2011 Herman Award Winner - Rajesh Paleti

Rajesh Paleti

Mr. Rajesh Paleti, Ph.D. student from the University of Texas at Austin, was selected to receive this award for his very high degree of motivation and dedication to his academic pursuits, combined with his spirit of camaraderie toward his fellow students.  Mr. Paleti has taken a leadership role on several research projects, including an activity-based modeling project and a vehicle ownership/type modeling project.  He is one of those rare and unique students who rises to every challenge, shows great excitement and enthusiasm in learning and contributing to transportation science, and has a mind set well suited for analytic scientific inquiry.  In his PhD work, Mr. Paleti is focusing on developing a comprehensive vehicle fleet composition and evolution framework that accommodates all of the dimensions characterizing vehicle fleet/usage decisions and vehicle transactions (i.e., fleet evolution) over time.  This research effort uses a unique data set that allows inclusion of several policy variables and vehicle characteristics that are not available in the market currently.  Mr. Paleti is using cutting-edge econometric and statistical methods in his research, some of which are new contributions to the econometric field and not just to the transportation field.  This is evident in the fact that he already has eight refereed papers published or forthcoming in some of the top international journals, and has eight papers being considered for publication.  He clearly is a dynamic and creative individual who is at the forefront of important methodological developments, as well as critical policy issues facing the profession.

This award, presented yearly by the SWUTC, comes with a $1,000 cash award.

Mr. Paleti’s major professor at the University of Texas at Austin is Dr. Chandra Bhat.