The University of Toronto’s Institute of Transportation Engineers (UT-ITE) student chapter, represented by Civil Engineering undergraduate students, won first place at the annual People-Centered Mobility in Transportation Sandbox Design Competition.
The event, held July 19-22 at Huntington Place in Detroit hosted by ITE – Community of Transportation Professionals and ITE Great Lakes District, is a transportation planning/design challenge open to student teams across North America. Although only three members were able to travel to Detroit to present the team’s work, the team noted the hard work and valuable contributions from all seven members were essential in this landmark international win.
For the first time in the competition’s history, a Canadian ITE student team – represented by the University of Toronto – appeared as a finalist. Only the top two finalist groups, which qualify to present their work at the ITE International Conference, get to compete for first place.
All of the seven team members, with status as of September 2026, include: Kaiy Cao (Year 4 CivE), Ian Cassidy (Year 3 CivE), Lucas Gaspari (CivE on PEY), Michael Hollander (CivE on PEY), Sean Leung (Year 4 CivE), Thanusan Ragulan (CivE on PEY) and Owen Zhang (Year 4 CivE).