The 2026 Exceptional Technical Achievement Award was presented on January 13, 2026
Award Description
The Exceptional Technical Achievement Award shall be given in recognition of a project that has a potential for a positive impact on the transportation and/or land use decision-making field that meets the majority of the following criteria.
- Has been implemented, adopted or applied in practice at least once
- Whose methodology, formula, design, etc. are freely accessible to the public
- Promotes multilateral collaboration; and
- Advances the travel analysis field for the public good.
Nominees are considered by a three-person award committee and forwarded to the Zephyr Board for approval. Awards are made at the TRB Annual Meeting.
2026 Awardee
Congratulations to the winner of the 2026 Exceptional Technical Achievement Award: The “COVID & Telecommuting- Induced Changes in Individual Activity and Travel Patterns” Team!
This paper applied a new approach of using propensity mapping to better control for key factors. The research is highly policy relevant, with strong findings for long-term decisions—telecommuting reduces VMT, and transit needs are more dispersed. The paper revealed behavioral insights about how telecommuting connects with increased local non-work trips. The paper also had a useful multi-year perspective that demonstrated the value of frequent survey data for spotting trends and causal relationships.
The 2026 Impactful Research Award Committee was:
- Matthew Bhagat-Conway
- Sarah Sun
- Rachel Copperman
- Suzanne Childress
- Ali Shamshiripour
Board Facilitator: Jason Hawkins
Presenter at the 2026 TRB Annual Meeting Reception: Matthew Bhagat-Conway
Project Team
- Grace Jia
- Naitlyn Ng
- Ekin Ugurel
- Brian Lee
- Ram Pendyala
- Cynthia Chen
Award Recipients
Note: In 2023, the award updated/clarified to focus on a project.
- SACOG Technical Team, 2020
- VisonEval Team, 2021
- Peter Vovsha, 2022
- Travel Model Improvement Program Exploratory Modeling and Analysis Tool (TMIP-EMAT), 2023
- AequilibraE, 2024
- OSMnx, 2025