Congratulations to ITS Outstanding Undergraduate Student of the Year Delbert Tran and Outstanding PhD Students of the Year Michael Montilla and Zhe Fu.
Outstanding Undergraduate Student of the Year presented to Delbert Tran in recognition of his outstanding performance in support of transportation research; for motivation, creativity and independence.
From his nominator: I have worked with quite a few graduate and undergraduate students before. However, Delbert, a first-year undergraduate, stands out as the best student I have ever worked with. His performance even exceeds that of a typical graduate student. He is like a full-stack software engineer, helping me develop multiple software tools to collect and analyze data from video cameras and professional websites to host project materials. Thanks to his help, my projects are even ahead of schedule! He is very motivated, creative, and independent. I only need to provide high-level guidance, and he will figure out the rest! It is really a wonderful experience working with him!
Outstanding PhD Student of the Year presented to Zhe Fu in recognition of consistent and exceptional service, mentorship and community building in support of ITS and affiliates.
From her nominators: Zhe Fu has given so much to the ITS community, as she has also received from it.
As a researcher, Zhe has built a body of work at the frontier of physics-informed machine learning and control for transportation systems, with publications in top. Her research journey traces the full arc of ITS Berkeley: from her master's work at TSRC developing and evaluating smart EV charging strategies and at PATH developing hardware-in-the-loop tools for CAV testing, through her PhD contributions to the CIRCLES project studying traffic flow smoothing in mixed autonomy systems, to her ongoing experiments at the Richmond Field Station.
As a mentor, Zhe has guided over 20 students (many are affiliated with ITS) who have gone on to top graduate programs and engineering roles. As a community builder, she founded RAPID-CEE to champion Asian and Pacific Islander representation in Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, coordinated the ITS Berkeley Seminar Series, moderated sessions at the UTC-PSR conference, and has volunteered at ITS Berkeley events with a consistency that defines what community membership truly means.
Zhe did not just grow within ITS Berkeley, she made ITS Berkeley grow with her. She is truly a student whose identity aligns more with ITS than CEE-TE (for her PhD and masters) and EECS (for her second masters). Her academic home is ITS, and she will be one of the future alums who will continue to hold the ITS community together externally to Berkeley. I do believe in investing in our future alums who will help us continue grow the ITS community externally. She is definitely one such person.
Outstanding PhD Student of the Year presented to Michael Montilla in recognition of exceptional service and leadership, and many contributions to the climate and culture of the transportation student experience on campus.
From his nominators: Mike is extremely conscientious, diligent, and communicative; intellectually curious and creative; and in general, a joy to work with. He has been highly involved in departmental activities, serving in a number of different capacities as a student representative and leader, taking charge of organizing the Institute for Transportation Studies speaker series, and showing a high level of interest and knowledge about transportation and related topics, both in practice and scholarship. He has also been instrumental in improving the climate and experience for transportation students at the Berkeley campus.
In spring 2025, Michael volunteered to lead the organization of the ITS seminar series. He delivered what is arguably the best speaker series of the decade. Numerous attendees remarked about the quality of the speakers and the breadths of topics. Michael deserves all the credit. Frankly, I have never seen this level of service from a doctoral student.
He was recently student representative to a new Dean search for the College, and is also reliably available as a representative to understand and communicate doctoral cohort needs in the department. Mike's outstanding record of academic achievement, his research interests, his dedication to the professional and research world of transportation, and his life experiences make him a rising star among young transportation scholars in the US. In addition, Michael really enjoys building community and contributing to the institutions to which he belongs.