This summer, UFTI’s own Deja Jackson is participating in the United States Department of Transportation’s Summer Transportation Internship Program for Diverse Groups (STIPDG).

Jackson is interning at the FHWA’s Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center (TFHRC) in McLean, VA where she is one of the first to help analyze the newly collected data from their Motorcycle Crash Causation Study (MCCS). The STIPDG is funded by the FHWA’s Office of Civil Rights’ On-the-Job Training Supportive Services Program, and its mission is to provide students with hands-on experience and on-the-job training while working on current transportation-related topics and issues.

In 2009, there were 4,462 motorcycle crash-related fatalities in the United States—more than twice the number of motorcycle rider fatalities that occurred in 1997. This increase contrasts with a 27-percent reduction in the number of fatalities in passenger cars and light trucks. In response to this growing concern, the U.S. Congress passed legislation to fund the MCCS, which is the most comprehensive research effort into the causes of motorcycle crashes in the U.S. in more than 30 years.

“Ultimately through this research FHWA hopes to identify specific crash scenarios or causation factors that are either prevalent in the data and represent the greatest potential benefit from the use of connected vehicle technology in the future,” Jackson explained.

Jackson is a civil engineering doctoral student at UFTI working under Dr. Sivaramakrishnan Srinivasan as a Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellow, which awards fellowships to undergraduate and graduate students pursuing degrees in transportation-related disciplines. Though only her first year at the University of Florida, she had built up an impressive resume of accolades.

She was one of three students selected from the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering to receive the Committee 200 (C200) Scholar Award. This was announced at the Powered to Lead: Transforming the Future as Women Summit earlier this March, an event sponsored by the C200 and the Engineering Leadership Institute at the University of Florida.

And during the 95th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) in January, she won Best Oral Presentation at the 2016 Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program (DDETFP) Transportation Research Showcase for her work titled “Today’s Perception of Vehicle Safety and Its Impact on Preparing for Tomorrow’s Autonomous Vehicles”.

Though enjoying her time with the FHWA, she does see the differences between Gainesville and the Washington D.C. area when it comes to transportation.

“Living in D.C. and commuting to McLean everyday has already given me a greater appreciation for the lack there of traffic in Gainesville,” Jackson said. “Overall though, the city is great, and I’m enjoying all of the places to go to, and I have quite a few of my line sisters from my sorority out here.”