For the eighth time in the past eight years, a UCLA Urban Planning student has won an award for the best transportation policy and planning master’s project, thesis, or dissertation from the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC). This year, Paul A. Sorensen, now an Associate Operations Researcher with the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, won the Parker Award for Outstanding Non-thesis Master's Degree Paper in Policy and Planning. Sorensen's paper was a study of the recent rise in electronic road use metering around the world. The study was conducted for the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Sorensen, who graduated from the Urban Planning M.A. program in June, 2005, also holds a doctorate and master’s degree in geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara and is a graduate of Dartmouth College, where he majored in computer science and geography. Each year, faculty from 62 CUTC-member research universities from around the U.S. nominate outstanding masters projects, theses, and dissertations in two categories: policy & planning, and science & technology. Sorensen will receive his award at the annual Awards Banquet of the Council of University Transportation Centers on January 21, 2006 in Washington, D.C. “Since the awards program was initiated in 1994, UCLA Urban Planning students have dominated the policy & planning category with eight awards,” said Brian Taylor, Associate Professor of Urban Planning. Taylor, who also is the director of the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS) at UCLA, added that the next closest university in the category is MIT, which has four. The Council of University Transportation Centers was established in 1979 by the major transportation centers and institutes in the United States. Its membership represents more than 60 of the leading university-based transportation programs in the nation.