Congratulations to civil engineering graduate student Joshua Harmon! He received an honorable mention from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Across the University, a total of 20 students received the Fellowship, and 14 received honorable mentions. The NSF GRFP, established in 1952, is the oldest STEM fellowship program supporting research-based graduate students. In a typical year, thousands of very well qualified students—seniors and first- and second-year graduate students—apply for approximately 2,000 Fellowships. Nearly the same number of honorable mentions are given.

Josh is a first year graduate student studying structural engineering in the civil engineering school at Purdue. He graduated from Purdue with a Bachelor's Degree with Highest Distinction in civil engineering in May 2019. As an undergraduate, he did research with graduate students at the Bowen Lab. Josh has worked as a structural engineer designing steel frame buildings at Complete Structural Consulting in Indianapolis, IN and Dunaway in Fort Worth, TX.  He is currently working on his Ph.D, doing research with Dr. Amit Varma on the behavior and design of Composite Plate Shear Walls. His career goals are to work in industry on performance-based design or forensic investigations.