WASHINGTON — The Transportation Research Board’s Airport Cooperative Research Program today announced the winners of its annual ACRP Graduate Research Awards. The prestigious awards support applied research on airport and related aviation system issues that aims to help the public sector improve the quality, reliability, safety, and security of the U.S. civil aviation system.   

ACRP Graduate Research Awards stimulate thought, discussion, and research by those who will become part of the future airport industry workforce. Now in its 19th year, the program is sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration and managed by the Transportation Research Board (TRB). This year’s eight awardees represent six universities from across the U.S. Their research focuses on a wide variety of topics including airfield pavement, airport planning considerations, and advanced air mobility.

The award offers winners a $12,000 stipend; the opportunity to present their work at TRB’s annual meeting, to be held in Washington, D.C., in January 2026; and the possibility to have their final research paper published in TRB’s journal, Transportation Research Record. Awardees are also assigned a panel of experts to advise them throughout their research.

The 2025-2026 recipients of the ACRP Graduate Research Awards are:

Johann Jhanpiere Cardenas is a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research project is titled “Mechanistic Overload Permitting Approach for Flexible Airfield Pavements via Deterministic Damage Factors.” Imad L. Al-Qadi is his faculty mentor.

Lara Diab is a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her research project is titled “Development of a Web-Based Decision Tool for Probabilistic Optimization of Flexible Airfield Pavement Performance and Life-Cycle Cost.” Imad L. Al-Qadi is her faculty mentor.

Daud Nabi Hridoy is a doctoral student at Virginia Tech. His research project is titled “Priority-Based Congestion Prediction and Scheduling for eVTOL Vertiports.” Md Sami Hasnine is his faculty mentor.

Zhenglei Ji is a doctoral student at New York University. His research project is titled “Modeling Advanced Air Mobility Operations at Hub Airports: A Fast-Time Simulation Approach Considering Air Traffic Control Capacity Constraints.” Joseph Chow is his faculty mentor.

Mohammad Amin Akbari Kamangar is a doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine. His research project is titled “Airport Parking as a Grid Asset: Maximizing the Value of Dynamic EV Charging Management.” Matthew D. Dean is his faculty mentor.

Jiayu Liu is a doctoral student at Purdue University. Her research project is titled “Mapping Expansion Potential: A Spatial Survey and Land Categorization Analysis for U.S. Airports.” Yi Gao is her faculty mentor.

Tolulope Oluwumi is a doctoral student at Purdue University. His research project is titled “Aligning Policy and Practice: A Gap Analysis of Environmental Policy Implementation by U.S. Airport Operators.” Yi Gao is his faculty mentor.

Xiaoyu Zhang is a doctoral student at Rutgers University. His research project is titled “Improving Maintenance Strategy of Runway Pavement Grooves for Aircraft Landing Safety.” Hao Wang is his faculty mentor.

The Airport Cooperative Research Program is an industry-driven, applied research program that develops near-term, practical solutions to airport challenges. The program is managed by the Transportation Research Board, which is a program unit of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine — private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, engineering, and medicine. The National Academies operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln. For more information, visit https://www.nationalacademies.org/.

Contact:
Douglas Sprunger, Director of Communications
Transportation Research Board
202-334-1368; dsprunger@nas.edu

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