Ron Klemencic (BSCE '85) has been selected to receive the 2019 OPAL award — presented by ASCE — for his innovation and excellence in civil engineering design. This year's OPAL leadership award winners will be honored at the 2019 OPAL Gala, March 14, in Arlington, VA.

The National Academy of Construction has elected Harold F. Force (BSCE 1973, MSCE 1974), president of Force Construction Company, Inc., and executive vice president of Force Design, Inc., as a member of its class of 2018. He was formally inducted on October 11 during the NAC annual meeting, held at the US Grant Hotel. The 2018 class includes 37 new inductees. More than 300 leaders were considered for the selective NAC election process.

In the coming weeks, 40 scooters will be distributed across Purdue's campus to begin a four-week research project on best practices for using e-scooters. The research project, called Jelly, is being led by Darcy Bullock, Purdue's Lyles Family Professor of Civil Engineering and director of the Joint Transportation Research Program, which is operated out of Purdue's Discovery Park.

Suresh Rao studies failure. Specifically, he examines failures of the infrastructure networks that provide critical services to cities. By examining breakdowns and recoveries in urban infrastructure, he and his team are learning how to design and operate cities better — and help urban communities become more resilient. Rao, Professor of Civil Engineering and the Lee A. Rieth Distinguished Professor of Environmental Engineering, views cities as complex systems, a conglomeration of engineered networks (utilities, power grids, roads), the institutions that manage them, and the communities that expect their demands to be met reliably and affordably.

A study completed in 2017 by the Lyles School of Civil Engineering was used by the Indiana General Assembly to realign the highway taxation structure that addressed the growing transportation-funding needs. The study concluded that the existing (at that time) fuel tax was inadequate to ensure that the state's roadways were maintained properly. According to the report, federal and most state fuel tax rates have not changed for many years. That and the increased fuel efficiency of modern cars has created a serious funding gap that is rapidly growing.

Electric cars that charge while driving? Purdue civil engineers want to make that leap. Konstantina (Nadia) Gkritza, Associate Professor in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, studies the practicality of a roadway where electric-powered vehicles are recharged as they drive along it.

Sometimes big innovations are made through small steps. Civil engineering researchers at Purdue are developing a way to test the quality of newly laid concrete — through vibrations. Currently, quality testing for laid concrete consists of retrieving a sample from the site, taking it back to a laboratory, and then testing its compression strength. Associate Professor Na "Luna" Lu of the Lyles School believes she and her graduate students have developed a better, faster method.

By infusing concrete with microscopic crystals made from wood cellulose, Purdue Professor Pablo Zavattieri, along with researchers from Purdue's School of Materials Engineering and Oregon State University, have shown they can make concrete stronger. This project, which started in 2011 with a National Science Foundation grant, is now moving from the laboratory to the real world with a bridge under construction in northern California this year.

Natural disasters are life-changers for all involved, and understanding why some communities recover faster than others can be better achieved by looking at both the social and physical networks within these communities and their interplay, according to a four-year Purdue University study of Hurricane Sandy.

The Purdue University Board of Trustees on Friday (Oct. 12) ratified five named faculty positions within the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, including Ernest Blatchley (Lee A. Rieth Professor in Environmental Engineering), Ayman Habib (Thomas A. Page Professor of Civil Engineering), Chad Jafvert (Lyles Family Professor in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering), Julio Ramirez (Karl H. Kettelhut Professor in Civil Engineering), and Amit Varma (Karl H. Kettelhut Professor in Civil Engineering).

Purdue University researchers have 3D-printed cement paste, a key ingredient of the concrete and mortar used to build various elements of infrastructure, that gets tougher under pressure like the shells of arthropods such as lobsters and beetles. The technique could eventually contribute to more resilient structures during natural disasters.

Congratulations to Civil Engineering PhD students Sikai "Sky" Chen and Tariq U. Saeed! They have been nominated to participate in the 2019-2020 Schmidt Science Fellows program. Not only is this a high honor for the students, but also for Purdue, which, in the first year of the program, was selected as one of the elite universities around the globe eligible to nominate potential fellows.

Indiana LTAP is pleased to introduce Rich Domonkos as the new Program Manager. Rich has been with the Indiana LTAP Center for 11 years. As Training Specialist, he managed the training program and assisted with technology transfer in the form of technical manuals, short courses, and seminars.

CE undergrad Alexis Marks has been awarded the Donald C. and Marion E. Currier scholarship. This award, presented by the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County (IN), provides full tuition, fees, an allowance for books and on-campus housing or off-campus living allowance for up to six semesters at Purdue University.

Iason Konstantzos (Ph.D. ’16) started as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on Aug. 13, 2018.

Paul Amico (BSCE '96), Associate Vice President and Project Manager at Carollo Engineers, will be inducted into Purdue's Office of Professional Practice Cooperative Education Hall of Fame on September 14th.

Purdue University has been awarded $70 million to lead a consortium to co-create research solutions for developing countries. Serving as co-principal investigator for the proposal was Civil Engineering Associate Professor Joe Sinfield.

Luna Lu, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering, along with graduate student Aline Elquist and a team of several researchers from Indiana University, has won the 2018 Disease Diagnostics INventors Challenge with $30,000 in funding for a one-year project period.