Aleem Mohammed, the data analytics and systems lead at the Institute for Transportation Research and Education (ITRE), received the NC State University Award for Excellence on June 2. The award, which recognizes employees for accomplishments and contributions that go above and beyond normal job responsibilities, is the most prestigious honor bestowed upon nonfaculty employees at NC State. 

Mohammed was one of 12 employees to receive the annual award, all of whom automatically became eligible to win a Governor’s Award for Excellence.

Employees can be nominated for the NC State Award for Excellence under the criteria of one of six categories: Customer Service, Efficiency and Innovation, Human Relations, Outstanding State Government Service, Public Service, Safety and Heroism, and Spirit of North Carolina. Mohammed was nominated in the Efficiency and Innovation category.

About Aleem Mohammed

Mohammed joined ITRE, which is administratively managed by the Office of Research and Innovation (ORI), in 2024. He was one of two winners selected from 19 total ORI employees who were nominated for this year’s Award for Excellence.

When ITRE’s Geospatial and Data Analytics team lost half its staff, Mohammed went above and beyond his normal duties to address two urgent challenges: modernizing the North Carolina State Highway Patrol’s commercial vehicle enforcement (CVE) tracking applications and migrating dozens of production dashboards to Microsoft Power BI.

In merely four months, Mohammed managed to modernize the North Carolina State Highway Patrol’s commercial vehicle enforcement tracking applications. And within a year, Mohammed successfully migrated 36 production dashboards to a new data visualization and business intelligence platform. These efforts resulted in annual savings of over $110,000, largely in licensing fees.

Mohammed also rebuilt North Carolina Vision Zero’s public-facing and restricted dashboards, which traffic safety planners and more than 400 sworn highway patrol supervisors rely on.

“Aleem is regarded by our law enforcement partners and colleagues as a rare combination of trusted technical expert, highly responsive collaborator, and innovative leader,” Greg Ferrara, Mohammed’s supervisor at ITRE, wrote in his nomination letter. “He didn’t simply keep services running — he modernized them, reduced recurring costs, and created a scalable platform that enabled ITRE to serve North Carolina and expand nationally.”

Mohammed is the first ORI employee to win the university-level Award for Excellence since North Carolina Sea Grant’s Spencer Rogers was honored with it in 2019.