Gabe Garcia the president of CSCMP-NYC announces the board has awarded Brenda Cruz the Rhoda Isaacs Scholarship. Ms. Cruz will be given a check for $1,000.00 at the CSCMP-NYC meeting May 18, 2005.

Brenda Cruz graduated Magna Cum Laude as Industrial Engineer from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (2002). She is a graduate student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she expects to receive a MS degree in Transportation Engineering next summer 2005. As Planner for a Johnson & Johnson company, she earned experience in supply chain management. This company recognized her leadership skills by granting Mrs. Cruz the Rookie of the Year Award, which recognized exceptional performance among college hires. As a graduate student, she is a scholar of the Advanced Institute for Transportation Education Program, granted by the University Transportation Research Center.

Currently, she works as a Research Assistant in a project sponsored by the NYSDOT, which aims to define a set of policies and programs that would foster off-peak freight deliveries to commercial areas in New York City. She is co-author of technical papers that have been published and/or presented in the proceedings of the XIII Pan-American Conference (2004), the 84th Annual Transportation Research Board (2005) and the Fourth International Conference on City Logistics (2005).