"This is a proposal for an early-stage research student competition – a kind of Transport Research ‘Olympics’ – to complement the goals of the Transport Research Arena conference, TRA, in Brussels in 2010. The goal is to stimulate interest among young researchers in the conference and contribute to establishing it as the premier Transport event in the world. This activity will directly support the TRA event and reinforce its profile as a major European and internationally important conference. At the same time it will strengthen European research in surface transport by promoting collaboration and inter-disciplinarity and be recognising and rewarding excellence.The YEAR competition will be in two stages. In the first stage, up to about 600 students will submit abstracts, clearly specifying the deliverables and practical outputs of their research. There will be a network of about 80 judges, experts in surface transporation research, to encourage a wide participation from all over Europe. The abstracts will be hosted on a website which will constitute a showcase of early stage research in Europe. There will be about 6 categories, four for research which tracks, as far as possible, the core areas of the TRA conference a fifth ‘future vision’ category and a sixth 'inter-disciplinary' category which promotes the linking of pure science, socio-economics and applied science. In the second stage, about 50 finalists will be brought to the TRA-2010 conference to present their work in the form of posters and other displays. There will be gold, silver and bronze medals for each of the 6 categories and winners will be featured prominently at the conference to stimulate interest among delegates, journalists and the general public. The exhibition will be in a prominent area to encourage a wide ranging discussion between students and delegates who constitute future potential employers and stakeholders in road transport."