Richard Lewis was one of the signers of a petition to allow "colored" children to attend public school in Greensburg, Indiana. Could he possibly have envisioned that he would have a son who would someday become Purdue University's first African American graduate?

William Baker, Structural Engineering Partner at SOM, will present this seminar in the 150 Years of Giant Leaps in Engineering series, on February 19th at 4:30 p.m. in Fowler Hall. Students are invited to a meet & greet with Mr. Baker earlier that day from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in Hampton Hall's Wood Commons.

The 105th Purdue Road School will be held March 4-7 on the Purdue University campus. This is a great Indiana tradition that brings together federal, state and local agencies, industry, consulting and academia to collaborate and reflect on diverse transportation topics. Over 3,000 attendees will have the opportunity to hear Opening Session and Luncheon keynote addresses from leaders in the transportation field, choose from nearly 200 hours of technical sessions, visit a variety of exhibitors, and network with their peers.

Kumares C. Sinha, Olson Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering, has been recognized by Jadavpur University, India, at the commemoration of its 60th anniversary, as a Distinguished University Alumnus.

Shuai Li (PhD '17), Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, has been named the recipient of the ASCE Collingwood Prize for his paper entitled, "Integrating Natural Language Processing and Spatial Reasoning for Utility Compliance Checking," published in the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management.

Idling in a long highway line of slowed or stopped traffic on a busy highway can be more than an inconvenience for drivers and highway safety officers. It is one of the most vulnerable times for "secondary accidents," which often can be worse than an original source of the slowdown, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration. In fact, secondary crashes go up by a factor of almost 24 during the time that highway safety officials are assessing and documenting the crash site.

Sayan Dey, a PhD student in hydraulics and hydrology, has been selected as Purdue's 2018 Esri Development Center (EDC) Student of the Year for his work on "Watershed scale River Channel Morphology Model: An ArcMap tool for automated generation of river channel geometry."

Assistant Professor Brandon Boor's research on babies stirring up clouds of bio-gunk when they crawl has been featured as one of the top 10 Purdue research news stories of 2018.

Rebecca S. McDaniel, P.E., Ph.D., technical director at the North Central Superpave Center at Purdue University, has been elected to the board of directors of ASTM International, an international standards organization that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems, and services.

Holiday drivers who find that roadwork is driving them crazy may find in future years that a Purdue University-affiliated startup can seal the deal for a merrier journey. Environmental Concrete Products is a startup based on a Purdue innovation, with funding for the Indiana Soybean Alliance, which uses engineering sealant technology to protect and prolong the life of new and existing concrete to make a smoother ride for travelers and save costs for road upkeep and repairs.

The Center for Security Research and Education (CSRE) at Penn State University has announced that Caitlin Grady (PhD 2015), assistant professor of civil engineering, has been selected as the center's inaugural Faculty Fellow. The fellowship will provide funding beginning in January 2019 for Grady’s security-related research.

Purdue civil engineering students took first place in the 2018 International Bridge Competition, tied with Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. The team consisted of undergraduate students Hassan Bin Ammar, Eshana Kolli, Ziyan Lu, Darryl Sexton, Tianlong Sun, Ertica Susanto, Charley Yang, and PhD student Kinsey Skillen. Support for the team was provided by Prof. Santiago Pujol, Associate Professor Ayhan Irfanoglu, and Visiting Professor Luis Fargier.

Debra "Deb" Burrow, David M. Rater, and Nadezhda "Nadya" Zyaykina were recognized as finalists for the 2018 College of Engineering Staff Awards of Excellence at the annual staff awards banquet held on December 7th. Nadya Zyaykina was named the recipient of the Professional Achievement Award.

One hundred thousand residents of Flint, Michigan, could use water only from bottles or filters during a years-long lead contamination crisis, which started when the city switched to a new drinking water source in 2014. As part of a class assignment that grew into a case study, Purdue University researchers found that during the first three weeks of the disaster alone, anywhere from 31 to 100 million bottles were generated as waste. This means that Flint should have been buried in plastic by the time the crisis ended in 2017.

On Dec. 11, Lyles Family Professor of Civil Engineering Chad Jafvert was inducted into the University's Book of Great Teachers - honoring outstanding teaching faculty who have demonstrated sustained excellence in the classroom. Held every five years, the induction ceremony will take place at 3:30 p.m. in Purdue Memorial Union's South Ballroom President Mitch Daniels and Provost Jay Akridge will speak at the event.

California's deadly Camp Fire is now 100 percent contained, but low humidity and strong winds in the state mean that wildfires could strike again. Unfortunately, better building materials and planning can only offer so much protection, says Julio Ramirez, the center director for the National Science Foundation's Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure Network Coordination Office, and Purdue's Karl H. Kettelhut Professor of Civil Engineering.

As we approach the holiday season, Purdue Civil Engineering Professor and Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program Director John Haddock offers some advice for travelers.

Professor Panagiota Karava has been appointed as the Jack and Kay Hockema Associate Professor in Civil Engineering. This is the first "Rising Star" professorship designed to recognize faculty members in the early stages of their career.