Congratulations to Benjamín Colucci-Ríos, PhD, PE, F.ASCE, F.ITE, for being selected by ASCE's Transportation and Development Institute to receive the 2021 Wilbur S. Smith Award. This award, which was instituted in 1984, recognizes Dr. Colucci-Ríos for his "unending leadership and dedication to action for the improvement of road safety in Puerto Rico and around the world." This prestigious award will be presented at the International Conference on Transportation & Development/ Pavements, June 8-10, 2021.

Dr. Colucci-Ríos attended Purdue University from 1978-84, working on two Joint Highway Research Project (JHRP), currently Joint Transportation Research Program (JTRP), research projects associated with Truck Weight Studies (TWS) and Pavement Management System (PMS). Professors Eldon J. Yoder and Kumares C. Sinha were his faculty advisors.

He has been a faculty member at the University of Puerto Rico- Mayaguez (UPRM) since 1984. He directed Purdue’s Engineering Project in Community Service (EPICS) initiative at UPRM, the UPR/MIT/Tren Urbano Professional Development Program, and served as the Puerto Rico Spokesperson for the worldwide initiative of the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020. He is currently a Co-PI in several projects in the UTC’s SAFER-SIM and National Institute for Congestion Reduction (NICR).

In the international arena, he was the first U.S. citizen to serve as President (Caribbean Region) of the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institutions (LACCEI) and the Pan American Union of Engineering Associations (UPADI), as well as the President of the Pan American Transportation Integral Committee.  He has been honored on numerous occasions in Puerto Rico as a Distinguished Engineer, Researcher and a Civil Leader.

Dr. Colucci-Ríos is a former Acting Dean of the School of Engineering of the UPRM. For the last four decades, he has also served as a consultant and advisor to the Puerto Rico Transportation and Highway Authority (PRHTA) of the Department of Transportation and Public Works (DTPW). He currently serves as the founding Director of the Puerto Rico Transportation Technology Transfer Center (PR-LTAP), Technical Oversight Director for the FHWA's Every Day Counts initiative in Puerto Rico, and Member of the Board of Directors of the Pan American Academy of Engineering (PAE).