Institute of Transportation Engineers Recognizes Rising Star Alyssa Ryan

Alyssa Ryan, an assistant professor in the University of Arizona Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, has won a 2022 Young Leaders to Follow Award from the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE).

The award recognizes ITE members under age 35 who have made a mark on the transportation community. Ryan, who also serves as the assistant director of the UA Center for Applied Transportation Sciences, is one of 23 members in the 2022 class.

“ITE provides leadership opportunities to those of all ages, but these members have distinguished themselves at a young age," said ITE executive director and CEO Jeff Paniati. "They have made significant contributions to ITE’s success, and we look forward to great things from them in the years to come.”

Ryan joined the UA in fall 2021 after completing a PhD in civil engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she helped lead the university’s student chapter of ITE and won multiple scholarships from the organization. After graduation, she spent a year as a visiting scholar at Technical University of Munich and continued her involvement in ITE. She co-chaired the Northeastern District’s first ITE Student Leadership Summit, published and reviewed research in the ITE Journal and presented at the 2022 ITE virtual spring conference. She is now a member of the organization’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee, the newly formed Equity Committee and the ITE Education Council.

Her work focuses on using data analytics to help transportation agencies become safer, more equitable, and more economically friendly for all users. Her work considers human factors such as whether safety investments for highways are equitably distributed, how male and female drivers are impacted differently by vehicle crashes and how to increase traffic signal safety for older drivers.

“This award is very meaningful for me, as ITE is an organization I greatly respect,” Ryan said. “I have seen how they are capable of leading conversations in the transportation industry and engineering space about topics including diversity, equity and inclusion.”