Transportation incidents like poor bridge or highway performance often leave drivers wondering if their local roads and bridges are adequate. A nationwide effort that began in Indiana and New York – and is now celebrating its 60th anniversary – aims to ensure the safety of local drivers. The Indiana Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP) helps street departments, county highway departments and local elected officials to better meet the needs of the public by acting as a resource for training, technical assistance and technology transfer.

Purdue Civil Engineering alumnus Chris Burke (BSCE '77, MSCE '79, PhD '83, HDR 2010) has received the prestigious 2019 Ray K. Linsley Award from the American Institute of Hydrology. The award recognizes Burke’s many contributions to the science and practice of surface water hydrology and the impact he has had on numerous communities by finding environmentally friendly solutions to water management problems.

Congratulations to alumnus and Professor of Civil Engineering and Head of Construction Engineering and Management Makarand Hastak (PhD '94) on being named the Dernlan Family Head of Construction Engineering and Management.

Matthew H. Hebdon, P.E. (Ph.D. 2015), assistant professor in the Charles Edward Via, Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia has been named the recipient of the 2019 Robert J. Dexter Memorial Award Lecture. The program provides an opportunity for individuals early in their careers in structural engineering to present a lecture on their steel bridge activities to the Steel Bridge Task Force and to participate in its semi-annual three-day meeting.

In 2017, Purdue University researchers helped discover a lava tube on the moon that could protect astronauts from hazardous conditions on the surface. Now, 3D image reconstructions of lava tubes on Earth could help assess if they are stable enough to build human habitats. The work is part of Purdue's Resilient ExtraTerrestrial Habitats (RETH), a group that researches how future human habitats on the moon or Mars can be made resilient against hazards like radiation, temperature fluctuations, seismic activity and meteorite impacts. Lava tubes could be part of the solution.

Samuel Labi, Professor of Civil Engineering and Associate Director of the Center for Connected and Automated Transportation (CCAT), delivered a keynote lecture titled, "Preparing Our Infrastructure for Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Operations: Challenges and Opportunities," at the 2019 International Conference on Smart Cities in Seoul, Korea on July 17, 2019.

Kevin Fitzpatrick, PE (BSCE '85) has been selected to serve as the next President and CEO of Benesch. He will assume the role in September of 2020. Kevin is currently an Executive Vice President and serves as the company's Great Lakes Regional Manager, overseeing operations and business development for the Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Railroad Divisions. Kevin has played an integral role in shaping Benesch throughout his tenure with the company.

Purdue civil engineering alumnus Tien Fang Fwa (PhD '85), Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the National University of Singapore, has been elected to the Singapore Academy of Engineering.

Alka Tiwari, a first-year Ph.D. student in the field of Hydrology and Hydraulics in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, has been awarded the 2019 NASA Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) fellowship to pursue her research work. The FINESST fellowship is a highly competitive program, and Alka is the only recipient this year from Purdue University.

Darcy Bullock, the Lyles Family Professor of Civil Engineering and director of the Joint Transportation Research Program at Purdue, will testify at 2 p.m. today (July 11) before the U.S. House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology's Subcommittee on Research and Technology.

Antonio Bobet, the Edgar B. and Hedwig M. Olson Professor of Civil Engineering, delivered a keynote lecture, titled "Resilient Extraterrestrial Habitats on the Moon and Mars," at the American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA) 53rd U.S. Rock Mechanics/Geomechanics Symposium on June 24th in New York City.

Danielli de Melo Moura, PhD candidate in the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, received an award for best poster in the civil engineering track at the 53rd U.S. Rock Mechanics/Geomechanics Symposium (ARMA 2019) held in New York City in June 2019. Co-authored by Antonio Bobet, Edgar B. and Hedwig M. Olson Professor in Civil Engineering, the work is titled, "Influence of Flaw Geometry on Crack Coalescence across a Frictional Interface in a Rock Model Material."

Tom Morales (BSCE 1975) will return to campus Nov. 3-5 as a member of the 2019 Old Masters – an exceptional group of alumni who have made significant contributions to their field of study and to society. While on campus, the Old Masters will partake in classroom talks, meetings with several student organizations and a community-wide panel discussion.

Jie Shan, Professor of Civil Engineering, along with Purdue researchers Bo Xu and Zhixin Li, have received the best paper award at the 2019 Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Workshop EarthVision for their work entitled, "Urban Semantic 3D Reconstruction from Multiview Satellite imagery." Several other co-authors from Kitware, Inc., Columbia University, and Rutgers University contributed to the paper.

Rih-Teng Wu, a PhD candidate from Smart Informatix Laboratory directed by Assistant Professor Mohammad Jahanshahi, received the best student paper award by the Structural Control and Health Monitoring Committee at ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) conference which was held at Caltech, Pasadena, CA on June 18-21, 2019. The title of Rih-Teng's paper is "Pruning Deep Convolutional Neural Networks for Efficient Edge Computing in Structural Health Monitoring."

Civil Engineering PhD candidate Jessica Eisma (advised by Dr. Venkatesh Merwade) was named a recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide (GROW) award. Jessica will be using the award to spend the Spring 2020 semester at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands working on the Transforming Weather Water data into value-added Information services for sustainable Growth in Africa (TWIGA) project with Prof. Nick van de Giesen.

Herta Montoya, a first year PhD student in civil engineering, was awarded 2nd place in the ASCE Dynamics Committee student paper presentation at the Engineering Mechanics Conference in Pasadena California on July 18-21, 2019.

Hubo Cai, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and Construction Engineering and Management, and PhD student Xin Xu received 3rd place for their paper at the 2019 ASCE International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering (i3CE2019) in Atlanta, Georgia.

Bryan Erler (BSCE '69, MSCE '70) has been named the ASME president-nominee for 2020-2021. An ASME Fellow and member of the Board of Governors from 2015-2018, Erler has been involved in ASME codes and standards activities for more than 45 years.

Thanks to a significant gift from the Dudley Family Foundation, the first building in the new Engineering and Polytechnic Gateway Complex, a new 250,000-square-foot grand entrance, will be named Dudley Hall. The gift is courtesy of William (Bill) Dudley Jr. (BSCE '74, HDR '15) and Martha (Marty) Dudley (IUPUI AAS Architectural Drafting '79, Purdue Northwest-Hammond BS Building Construction Tech '81).