The Purdue University Board of Trustees on Friday (June 14) ratified the naming of Jan Olek as the James H. and Carol H. Cure Professor in Civil Engineering.

Olek earned a Ph.D. in civil engineering from Purdue in 1987 and joined the Purdue faculty in 1994. Today, he studies the performance of concrete and asphalt in transportation infrastructure applications, and his standard-setting work has resulted in specifications adopted by the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Indiana Department of Transportation and numerous industry applications. A native of Poland, he is an associate member of the Civil Engineering Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences and is a Fellow of the American Concrete Institute.