Retired pilot Allen Baker's introduction to civil engineering came several decades before he graduated from Purdue University's online Master of Science in Civil Engineering program. He was introduced to the field in the United States Air Force Academy, where he majored in civil engineering as an undergraduate student. Though he planned on becoming a pilot after graduation, he wanted to major in something that interested him, and civil engineering was both fascinating and challenging. His classes opened his eyes and, in his words, turned on a switch that he could never turn off.

Pedestrian bridges have evolved from merely functional to works of art that often integrate with a city’s design plan. With improved appearance come more complex structural design elements and construction challenges. In "Proposed Criteria for the In-Service Inspection of Pedestrian Bridges," a new study for the Journal of Bridge Engineering, authors Aedh Alharthi and Robert Connor used a risk-based inspection method to determine optimal inspection intervals for pedestrian bridges.

This course provides students with the necessary background to design steel I-section and box-section flexural members, along with their bracing and their connections and splices. The course utilizes FEA software commonly used in steel bridge design to support the fundamentals taught as well as to provide students with practice-oriented examples and exercises.

The Transportation and Development Institute (T&DI) of ASCE has announced Samuel Labi, Professor of Civil Engineering, as the 2025 recipient of the Wilbur S. Smith Award. This award is given to a person who has made "special contributions to the enhancement of the civil engineer's role in highway engineering."

PhD candidate Deepak Benny was selected to participate in the 2025 Leaders Development Conference (LDC) organized by the Eno Center for Transportation in Washington, D.C. This prestigious, week-long fellowship brought together a select cohort of 17 graduate students from across the country to explore how national transportation policy is formed, debated, and implemented at the highest levels of government.

Purdue University researcher Pablo Zavattieri is developing a reconfigurable and navigable waterway barrier, or RNWB, to address saltwater intrusion in the Panama Canal. Zavattieri leads one of two projects that have received a total of $100,000 from Purdue Innovates’ Trask Innovation Fund to further enhance Purdue innovations for commercialization.

Woei-Chyi Chang, Ph.D. in the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering, has been awarded the Spring 2025 Best Ph.D. Dissertation Award in recognition of his outstanding academic achievements.

View photos from the 62nd annual CCE Open, held on June 13th at the Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex.

Mohammadhosein Pourgholamali, graduate student in the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering, received the award for best paper in the Planning and Development category, and finalist in all categories, at the 2025 ASCE International Conference of Transportation and Development held in Glendale, Arizona.

The Autonomous Motorsports Purdue (AMP) team placed third in the Autonomous Karting Series (AKS) regional competition held on June 7th at Purdue's Grand Prix track facility. The event was hosted by the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering.

This course provides students with the necessary tools to perform load analysis for vehicular, thermal, and wind loads in steel bridge superstructures. The course focuses on practical application of the structural engineering principles used in longitudinal analysis and transverse analysis of beam-slab bridges, floor systems, trusses and other typical steel bridge superstructures.

Wei Zhou, Ph.D. student in the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering, has received the Best Paper Award in the TG96 - Accelerating Innovation in Construction section at the 2025 World Building Congress (WBC) held recently at Purdue University.

Woei-Chyi Chang, Ph.D. candidate in the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering, has received the Best Paper Award in the TG96 - Accelerating Innovation in Construction section at the 2025 World Building Congress (WBC) held recently at Purdue University.

Abhishek Subedi, a PhD candidate in the Smart Informatix Laboratory led by Associate Professor Mohammad Jahanshahi, received the second runner-up award in the Best Student Paper Competition organized by the Structural Control and Health Monitoring Committee at the ASCE EMI 2025 Conference. Zixin Wang, another PhD candidate from the same lab, was also named a finalist in the EMI Machine Learning in Mechanics Student Paper Competition.

Amit H. Varma, Ph.D., Karl H. Kettelhut Professor in Civil Engineering and Director of Bowen Laboratory, has been recognized by the American Institute of Steel Construction with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his research and contributions in the areas of steel-concrete composite construction, fire design, and nuclear structures.

The Purdue University Board of Trustees on Friday (June 6) ratified the appointment of Makarand (Mark) Hastak as the Reilly Professor in the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering

Kike Garzon-Sabogal, a PhD candidate in the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering, aims through his research to gain an understanding of material behavior at a grain scale in order to “tune” material properties for different performance outcomes and behaviors in dynamic events like vibrations and earthworks.

The Slag Cement Association (SCA) announced Chibueze Sylvester Ajuonuma and his research project, "Practical Implementation of Internally Cured Slag Cement Concrete Using Superabsorbent Polymers," as a winner of its 2024 Slag Cement in Sustainable Concrete Awards. The winning projects were unveiled and celebrated on April 2, 2025, during the spring ACI Concrete Convention in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

A team of Purdue University researchers has received the Technology Innovation Award at the 2025 IEEE PES Energy and Policy Forum Innovation Showcase for their work on Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer (DWPT).

Jordan Cross, a Ph.D. student in the Lyles School of Civil and Construction Engineering, has been awarded the 2024 Stephen H. Rothblatt Memorial Scholarship by the Air & Waste Management Association – Lake Michigan States Section (AWMA-LMSS). The award was presented at the Annual Air Conference in Chicago.