Anusha Ramakrishnan, MSCS 2018

METRANS is pleased to announce that Kaitlyn Kenan Zhang, METRANS student assistant and MPP candidate at the University of Southern California, was awarded the prestigious James A. Ditch Education Fund Scholarship, offered by Southern California Regional Transit Training Consortium (SCRTTC).

The SCRTTC’s “focus is to provide a training resource network comprised of Community Colleges, Universities, Transit Agencies, Public and Private Organizations focused on the development and delivery of training and employment of the transit industry workforce that is proficient at the highest standards, practices, and procedures for the industry.” The SCRTTC Education Fund was established in honor of James Ditch (1947-2009), a founding member of SCRTTC, who had great passion for training and education. The scholarship is awarded annually to provide support to students who wish to pursue and/or advance their career in public transportation.

Zhang was among a diverse pool of applicants.  Jane Leonard, CFO of SCRTTC, shared, “Twenty-four students representing eight different educational institutions applied for these scholarships, which are awarded to students who are pursuing educational paths and subsequent careers in Transportation - Operations, Fleet Maintenance, Planning, Administration, etc.  While Kaitlyn represents USC, the other recipients were from Cerritos Community College, L.A. Trade Tech, Long Beach City College, and College of the Desert.”

Zhang was extremely grateful to be selected to receive the scholarship. Encouraging her fellow transportation students, Zhang said, “I found this scholarship opportunity through METRANS Student News and applied for it immediately. This is a scholarship that is designed to support students who want to pursue a career in public transportation, which is what I intend to do. There are so many opportunities in the field of public transportation development in Los Angeles and the rest of the world. And this is a field that concerns everybody’s daily life. It is a great encouragement for me to receive this scholarship right before my final semester in USC. I will definitely search for career opportunities that allow me to work on public transportation projects after graduation.” She also expressed her gratitude to her instructors for supporting her in securing this scholarship. “I also want to say thanks to Adjunct Professor Eric Shen for providing me the recommendation letter. I learned a lot from his class and his experience working in public agencies,” says Zhang.

METRANS heartily congratulates Kaitlyn Zhang and wishes her much future success!

Anusha Ramakrishnan

Anusha is a student assistant at METRANS Transportation Center who divides her time there between serving as an editor of METRANS weekly student newsletter and providing website support for the center. She is a first year Viterbi School of Engineering graduate student specializing in Computer Science. Her interests lie in the field of data science and machine learning to improve general accessibility and usability of technology. She is currently also pursuing a Natural Language Processing course at USC to help combine her two interests of linguistics and technology.