The New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) / Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation (CAIT) September 11th Memorial Program for Regional Transportation Planning selection committee has selected Abigail Alvarez, PPP ’25/MCRP ’26 for participation in a one-year research fellowship, which will run October 2025-September 2026.
The goal of the fellowship opportunity is to educate and motivate people interested in transportation technology and planning, and to encourage innovations in planning activities throughout the NYMTC region. The program fosters the academic and professional development of students by providing them with opportunities to participate in innovative research or planning projects.
As part of her fellowship, Abigail will work on the research topic Public Realm Health & Inclusivity, under the guidance of Daisy Gonzalez, Assistant Director of Public Realm Programming at the NYC Department of Transportation. The fellowship also includes significant financial assistance, including tuition reimbursement/stipend, toward her graduate studies.
The Public Realm Health & Inclusivity Pilot supports communities and fosters diversity and inclusion in the public realm. As a fellow, Abigail will assist with spearheading the evaluation of best practices programming efforts and emerging evaluation technologies, creating program metrics, collecting before and after data, reviewing site conditions, processing findings, and writing the final evaluation report to share program findings and best practices for improving public spaces, promoting the positive use of these spaces, and ensuring the safety of communities across all uses and backgrounds.
Abigail is a candidate in the Master of City and Regional Planning program, having recently completed her bachelor’s in Planning and Public Policy at Bloustein in 2025. A passionate advocate for sustainable and equitable urban development, in the spring of 2024 she worked for the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy on their global sustainable transport initiatives, learning about their Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Standard and the Cycling Cities Campaign. She was also selected as a 2024 Rutgers Scarlet Service summer intern, working as a Policy Analyst for the U.S. DOT Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Washington, DC. where she worked on a series of projects, ranging from facilitating key grant evaluation consensus meetings to researching the intersection of behavioral economics and transportation.
Last fall, she worked as a grant outreach intern for the NJ Department of Environmental Protection in the Uniting Financial Resources Department where she worked on the Grant Standard Language Guide. She also created a Justice40 Grant Tracking tool designed to help grant managers monitor progress on grants for underserved communities across the state. Before returning to Bloustein this fall to complete her final year of graduate studies in the MCRP program, she was a transportation planning intern at New Jersey Transit. Abigail was also the recipient of the Robin and Robert J. Nardi Endowed Scholarship and was awarded the undergraduate program’s Governor James J. Florio Undergraduate Public Service Award at graduation, presented to a student who has demonstrated dedication to their studies while maintaining a high level of commitment to public service values and ethics.