Each University Transportation Center names a Student of the Year.

In 2003, the Infrastructure Technology Institute was proud to name John Wirtz as its Student of the Year.  John is working on ITI-supported research with Professor Joseph Schofer and Institute Director David Schulz while earning his Master's degree in transportation engineering, which he expects to complete in March 2004. He received a cash prize and had his expenses paid to the Transportation Research Board meeting in Washington, DC in January 2004.

John's hometown is Columbus, Ohio. He received his B.S. in civil engineering, cum laude, with distinction, from The Ohio State University in June, 2002. At Ohio State, John was the president of the student ASCE chapter, the president of the club volleyball team, the treasurer of Chi Epsilon, the web-master for the OSU-COTA Partnership Advisory Committee, and a member of Tau Beta Pi. At Northwestern, he is a co-chair of the transportation club and a former member of the club volleyball team. Additionally, John is serving as the Exhibit Coordinator for the Transport Chicago 2004 Conference. His current research involves pre-planning traffic mitigation techniques for incident management. He is also interested in public transportation and New Urbanism.