Congratulations to Dr. Benjamin Colucci (MSCE '80, PhD '84) for receiving the FHWA-USDOT Administrator's Public Service Award. This award recognizes outstanding leadership and accomplishments in advancing transportation education, research, and workforce development and strong partnership with the Federal Highway Administration.

Kyubyung Kang, a member in Dr. Makarand Hastak's research team in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, has been named as recipient of the Fall 2017 Outstanding Graduate Student Award. This top honor recognizes one CE graduate student for outstanding service to the Purdue University and to the community, service character, organizational involvements, as well as technical and academic achievements through research, teaching, scientific publications and technical awards.

Congratulations to CE undergrad Whitney Weidenbenner, named 2018 recipient of the Chi Epsilon John Focht, Sr. scholarship for her academic achievements and campus involvement outside of the classroom.

William F. Brumund (BSCE '64, MSCE '65, PhD'69), former president and global CEO of Golder Associates, has been honored by ASCE as the 2018 Outstanding Projects And Leaders (OPAL) award-winner in management. The ASCE OPAL awards honor outstanding civil engineering leaders for their lifetime accomplishments. This year’s OPAL winners will be honored at the 2018 OPAL Gala, March 15, in Arlington, VA.

Purdue University researchers studying whether concrete is made stronger by infusing it with microscopic-sized nanocrystals from wood are moving from the laboratory to the real world with a bridge that will be built in California this spring. The researchers have been working with cellulose nanocrystals, byproducts generated by the paper, bioenergy, agriculture and pulp industries, to find the best mixture to strengthen concrete, the most common man-made material in the world.

Zhichao Lai received his B.S. in Civil Engineering in 2009 from Tongji University. He started his graduate work at Purdue in the same year, and completed his Ph.D. in 2014 working with Prof. Varma in the area of steel-concrete composite members. In 2017, Dr. Lai was recruited by the Government of China and Fuzhou University as the top young researcher in the field of structural engineering.

Gerald Lyles (BSCE '64), Senior Vice President of Lyles Diversified Inc.; Carlos Odio (BSCE '65), Partner and Board Member of Valle Del Tarso S.A. and Ticofrut S.A.; and Milo Riverso (MSCE '82, PhD '84), President and CEO of STV Group Inc., have been named recipients of the 2018 Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award by the College of Engineering.

Weeks of bridge work by high school students will quickly come to an end at the 39th annual Bridge Bust 2018 Competition hosted by Purdue's American Society of Civil Engineers. A total of 133 teams comprised of 245 students from 18 schools in Indiana and Illinois will participate in the event Friday (Feb. 23).

Jan Olek, Professor of Civil Engineering and Director of the North Central Superpave Center (NCSC), will give the Della Roy Lecture at the 9th Advances in Cement Based Materials conference to be held June 11-12, 2018 in State College, PA.

Leila Sadeghi, recent PhD graduate and current postdoc research associate of the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, was named a winner in the Graduate category of the 2016-17 Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) International Data Analysis Contest at the 97th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington, D.C.

Motorists enjoying days of above-freezing temperatures after shivering through frigid single digits may encounter a jarring reality by spring. Incidents of freezing-thawing temperatures this winter may result in troublesome potholes as the season progresses. John Haddock, a civil engineering professor and director of Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program, said the drastic nature of temperature swings isn't as much of a factor as the temperatures themselves.

CE grad student Peyman Yousefi has been awarded the Andrews Environmental Travel Grant in support of his graduate research. This highly competitive and prestigious award, which was established to support research focused on improving the world environment, supports travel for research relating to the environmental issues.

Purdue Civil Engineering Senior Design students visited the historic State Theatre in Logansport this week to analyze and develop plans to repair and revitalize the 78-year-old building.

When babies crawl, their movement across floors, especially carpeted surfaces, kicks up high levels of dirt, skin cells, bacteria, pollen, and fungal spores, a new study has found. The infants inhale a dose of bio bits in their lungs that is four times (per kilogram of body mass) what an adult would breathe walking across the same floor. As alarming as that sounds, lead researcher Brandon Boor of Purdue University is quick to add that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Purdue Global Ambassador Tolulope Omotoso's research aims at improving knowledge on the nexus and trade-offs between water, energy and food resources using the important food and energy producing state of Niger in Nigeria as a case study.

CE doctoral student Seyed Ali Ghahari was recently selected by the World Bank to represent Purdue, as a student volunteer and participant, in the 2017 Annual Youth Summit at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, DC. Ali was one of nearly 400 participants and volunteers at the 2017 Youth Summit, and chosen from a high-caliber pool of approximately 2,900 applicants from around the world representing 70+ countries and members of the public, private and academic sectors.

A team in earthquake-prone Seattle is daring to deliver an 850-ft-tall "proof of concept" for a composite structural-steel frame, instead of a steel frame around a reinforced concrete core. The $570-million Rainier Square Tower project is the culmination of three decades of exploration into composite steel structures for CE alumnus Ron Klemencic, with research being conducted at Bowen Laboratory since 2006.

Congratulations to Purdue Civil Engineering student Adlan Amran! He is the winner of this semester's Thomas and Evelyn Page ASCE Student Chapter Fund.

Brad Caffery was recognized as a finalist for the 2017 College of Engineering Staff Awards of Excellence at the annual staff awards banquet held at the Shively Club on December 1st.

A group of Purdue students in partnership with the Rotary Club of Lafayette are preparing to go Wednesday (Dec. 13) to the Dominican Republic to work on a project implementing water treatment systems.