The Purdue University Board of Trustees on Friday (April 12) ratified the naming of Robert J. Connor as the Jack and Kay Hockema Professor in Civil Engineering.

A team of Purdue civil engineering undergraduate and graduate students has won the inaugural national asphalt mixture design competition. Sponsored by CRH Materials Americas, Inc., the largest construction materials provider in North America, a total of 10 university teams competed to see which team could design the best performing asphalt mixture at the lowest cost.

The annual Purdue College of Engineering Faculty Excellence Awards honor faculty who have been selected by their peers as the most outstanding in fields such as research, engagement, mentoring, and teaching. Three Lyles School professors received awards at the 2019 ceremony – Larry Nies, Professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental and Ecological Engineering; Santiago Pujol, Professor of Civil Engineering; and Andrew Whelton, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental and Ecological Engineering.

A Purdue engineering professor will lead a new research institute dedicated to designing and operating deep space habitats. NASA announced Shirley Dyke will lead the new Resilient ExtraTerrestrial Habitats institute (RETHi) to be located in West Lafayette. Dyke is a professor of mechanical and civil engineering with a degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering.

Purdue’s Discovery Park, in partnership with the Joint Transportation Research Program, the Purdue Policy Research Institute, and the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, is hosting a Connected and Autonomous Transportation Vehicle (CATV) workshop for Purdue faculty and research staff. The free event will take place 1-5 p.m. April 24 in the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship, Room 121.

Amit Varma, Karl H. Kettelhut Professor in Civil Engineering and Director of Bowen Laboratory, has been selected to receive the 2019 Shortridge Hardesty Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI). He will be presented the award on April 27, 2019, at the Structures Congress in Orlando, Florida.

A desire to explore new ideas and learn from the best is what attracted Ersal Ozdemir (BSCE '97) to study civil engineering at Purdue and then go on to take Giant Leaps by starting a construction company and bringing professional soccer to Indianapolis. "Purdue Engineering provided me with a strong foundation to be successful in life," Ozdemir says.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has announced Lyles School of Civil Engineering undergraduate student Trevor Moore as the top 2019 New Face of Civil Engineering in the College category. The 2019 honorees are rising stars, inspired and inspiring, many of them drawn to the profession by a desire to help others and protect the planet.

Robert Frosch, senior associate dean of facilities and operations and professor of civil engineering, has been named an ACE Fellow for academic year 2019-20 by the American Council on Education (ACE).

Purdue University's Lyles School of Civil Engineering recognized six passionate, influential and visionary graduates during the 26th annual Civil Engineering Alumni Achievement Awards banquet.

Dr. Essam Sharaf, Purdue University Distinguished Engineering Alumni (BSCE '75, MSCE '80, PhD '84), Professor at Cairo University, and Former Prime Minister of Egypt delivered a lecture to the Lyles School of Civil Engineering's students, faculty, and staff on March 27, 2019, entitled: A Career Journey: From Engineering to Public Service.

Meg Hunter, undergraduate student at the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, has been awarded the 2019 Women's Transportation Seminar (WTS) Greater Indianapolis Chapter Scholarship. The scholarship was established to recognize an undergraduate female in the transportation industry.

Dr. Randall Poston, Sr. Principal at Pivot Engineers, a structural engineering consulting firm in Austin, Texas, will be holding a seminar and colloquium this April as a member of the inaugural class of Neil Armstrong Distinguished Visiting Fellows.

The Washington Business Journal has honored 51-year-old Steele Foundation LLC as one of the top multi-generational family-owned businesses in Greater Washington, in its fourth annual Family-Owned Business Awards competition. Owned and operated by a father-son tandem of Lyles School of Civil Engineering grads, Steele Foundation is one of only 15 family-owned businesses in this region to receive this year's honor, which exemplifies "overall excellence, innovation, ethics and philanthropy."

Congratulations to Rodrigo Salgado, Charles Pankow Professor in Civil Engineering, on being the new Editor in Chief of the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering.

Dr. Andrea Rinaldo, Professor of Hydrology and Water Resources and Director of the Laboratory of Ecohydrology at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Padova, Italy, returns to Purdue this year as an alumnus (PhD 1983) and a member of the inaugural class of Neil Armstrong Distinguished Visiting Fellows. Dr. Rinaldo held a research workshop on the structural and functional dynamics of complex networks on April 2nd.

Lyles School of Civil Engineering graduate student Seyed Ali Ghahari and undergraduate student Margaret Hunter have been named recipients of the 2019 Edward J. Cox Memorial Transportation Scholarship Awards. The award is presented annually by the Indiana Section of the Institute of Transportation Engineers.

After leaving her home in Greece to study at Purdue, Vicky Keramida studied environmental engineering and took a giant leap to start her own international environmental engineering firm that is based in Indianapolis and 100 employees strong. "I think Purdue gave us the confidence that we could do anything we wanted," Keramida says.

Congratulations to Tariq U. Saeed, recipient of the 2019 College of Engineering Outstanding Research Award. The award recognizes excellence in graduate student research from across the College of Engineering. Tariq will be recognized at the Spring Graduate Student Awards luncheon through a certificate and a $2000 award.

Brandon Boor, Assistant Professor in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, is the recipient of a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for his research into the formation, growth, and phase state of organic nanoaerosols in indoor environments.