Formed in memory of Dr. Lee Schipper, Founder of EMBARQ, the scholarship has helped advance the field of sustainable mobility for five years.

The Lee Schipper family and WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities are pleased to announce that Junia Compostella and Jaime Soza Parra have been selected to receive the 2018 Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship supports the recipients’ research, which focuses on advancing sustainable urban mobility.

The Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship was established in 2012 to celebrate EMBARQ founder and recognized researcher Dr. Lee Schipper’s vision and contributions to the fields of sustainable transport and energy efficiency. EMBARQ is a signature initiative of the WRI Ross Center.

Mr. Soza Parra’s research will investigate the causes and effects of public transit system reliability, with special research attention given to cities in Latin America. The geographic context was selected in part to determine how a lack of fixed time tables for bus and metro services affects users. “The Lee Schipper Memorial Scholarship will support the last part of the project, which is to understand how reliability differences affect travelers behavior,” said Mr. Soza Parra.

"Jaime’s work is expected to be an important contribution to understanding how much reliability of public transport can impact user perception and, consequently, the success of a public transport agency," said LSMS co-founder Ramon Munoz-Raskin. 

Ms.Compostella’s research focuses on the evaluation of “hedonic" non-monetary costs in the context of shared mobility at an international level; in particular Mexico City, Sao Paolo, Beijing and Mumbai metropolitan areas. This phase of Ms. Compostella's work includes travel surveys in the areas of interest. There are two forms of benefits that Junia expects from this research: 1) companies will gain better insight into consumer preferences surrounding hedonic costs related to  shared mobility; and 2) Ms. Compostella's study will support the work of policymakers in the field of sustainability from an equity, environmental and economic perspective. “The Lee Schipper award will support the survey and the diffusion of my final research product,” said Ms. Compostella.

"Junia’s proposal to look into the potential impact of future technologies to support decision-making in the present impressed the Selection Committee throughout the selection process. Another fantastic Lee Schipper Scholarship awardee," said Holger Dalkmann, Co-Founder of the LSMS and Former EMBARQ Director. 

In addition to this year’s two awardees, Ms. Rosalie Singerman Ray, Mr. Nick Ferenchak, Mr. John Mulrow, Mr. Ignacio Tiznado, Mr. Rounaq Basu, and Mr. Tomás Rossetti have been designated as Honorable Mentions, in recognition of their proposals having been counted amount the top tier in this year’s applicant pool.

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The scholarship was created by the Schipper Family and EMBARQ, with cooperation from leading scholars and policy makers, and is made possible by donations from individual donors as well as an instrumental grant from the Shell Foundation.