APTA has announced that two students it selected to advance to the international College and University High Speed Rail Competition—Kari Hernandez, a graduate student in transportation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Theodore Lim, an undergraduate at Stanford University majoring in civil engineering and urban planning—have won spots at the International Union of Railways’ (UIC) 2010 High Speed Rail World Congress in December, including expense-paid trips to Beijing.

As the North American partner of UIC, APTA disseminated the call for the competition to its university partners. Sixteen graduate and undergraduate students at U.S. and Canadian schools submitted applications for the program and an APTA review panel selected eight finalists (two as a team), who will be invited to participate in APTA programs in the year ahead. The judging process centered on original essays or artwork examining worldwide and national trends that will most impact the development of high-speed rail.

A total of 38 finalists from around the world applied for the nine student positions at the congress. Joining Hernandez and Lim in Beijing will be students representing Germany, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, Norway, and China.

The other North American finalists were Boshu Cui, Columbia University, undergraduate, urban planning; Josef Filipowitz, Ryerson University (Toronto), undergraduate, urban and regional planning; Paul Lewis, MIT, graduate student, transportation; Xiang Liu and Bryan Schlake, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, graduate students, civil engineering; and Jeffrey Pratte, University of Manitoba, graduate student, city planning.

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