Amit H. Varma, Karl H. Kettelhut Professor of Civil Engineering and Director of the Bowen Laboratory of Large-Scale CE Research at Purdue University's Lyles School of Civil Engineering, and his former student Zhichao Lai, Professor at Fuzhou University in China, have received the 2021 Alfred Noble Prize awarded by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) for their paper, "High Strength Rectangular CFT Members: Database, Modeling, and Design of Short Columns."

Established in 1929, this award consists of a fund contributed by engineers and others in honor of Mr. Alfred Noble, Past President of ASCE and WSE, for the purpose of perpetuating his name and achievements. The recipient of this inter-society award is selected by a committee with representation from ASCE, ASME, IEEE, AIMMP, and WSE. The award is given for a technical paper of exceptional merit published in any of these society’s technical publications. The paper must be written by two authors only, and the first author should be younger than 35 years at the time of publication.

This paper was nominated by the chair of the SEI/ACI Committee of Composite Construction, and member of the AISC Task Committee (TC) 5 on Composite Construction. The paper was nominated for its fundamental contributions, technical merit, and impact to the engineering profession. On the basis of this paper (Lai and Varma, 2018), and the subsequent research that Prof. Varma has been conducting with his students, the upcoming revision of the AISC Specification (which governs the design of steel and composite structures in the U.S. and many countries abroad) has included provisions for the use of high-strength steel and concrete materials in the design of composite columns.

The technical excellence of this research work, and its impact on the profession have been aptly recognized by the Alfred Noble Prize in Civil Engineering, which is named after one of the most prominent civil engineers. Please follow this link to read more about Mr. Alfred Noble, an engineering legend, and his tremendous contributions to the profession.