The University of Pennsylvania’s Megan S. Ryerson has received the Transportation Research Board’s 2016 Fred Burggraf Award. The international award recognizes the year’s best research paper by researchers 35 years of age or under.

Dr. Ryerson, assistant professor of city and regional planning and electrical and systems engineering at Penn, and faculty fellow at the Penn Institute for Urban Research (Penn IUR), received the award for her paper “Building Air Service Sustainability: Analytical Approach to Documenting Air Carrier Incentive Programs in Airport Sustainability Plans.”

“I’m incredibly honored to have my research recognized in this way by the TRB,” said Dr. Ryerson. “As cities contemplate how to build economic development through air service, I’m glad to see my work investigating the cost and efficacy of air service incentive programs having an impact on the community.”

In the paper, Dr. Ryerson examines the emergence of air carrier incentive programs through which major airports use their revenue to provide subsidies and incentives for airlines to launch routes to new destinations. She found that some of the busiest airports in the country provided over $10-20 million in incentives from 2012 to 2015, while many other airports in medium to large cities provided $500,000-$5 million over the same time period. The paper investigates the role these incentives play in generating regional economic development, and compares these costs with existing airport-based economic development initiatives.

The Burggraf Award was established in 1966 to stimulate and encourage young researchers to contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the field of transportation. The award was named in honor of Fred Burggraf, who served as TRB’s executive director from 1951 until his retirement in 1964.