Structural Engineering

A Purdue University team, led by Civil Engineering Associate Professor Joe Sinfield, has developed a new method to detect the presence of certain hazardous solvents in water and soil.

Lisa L. Losada Rojas, PhD student at the Lyles School of Civil Engineering, has been awarded a $3,000 scholarship from the Women's Transportation Seminar (WTS) Greater Chicago Area chapter for the 2018-2019 academic year.

Area students will test their bridge design capabilities when they come to Purdue University for the annual Bridge Bust Competition. The event, now entering its 40th year, will include a total of 161 teams composed of 289 students from 18 schools in Indiana and Illinois participating in the event Friday (Feb. 22). It is hosted by Purdue's American Society of Civil Engineers.

The American Concrete Institute has named Purdue University with the ACI Award for University Student Activities.

A recently published paper co-written by a group of researchers including Shirley Dyke, Santiago Pujol, and Julio Ramirez, has been selected by ASCE as the Editor's Choice.

Richard Lewis was one of the signers of a petition to allow "colored" children to attend public school in Greensburg, Indiana. Could he possibly have envisioned that he would have a son who would someday become Purdue University's first African American civil engineering graduate?

William Baker, Structural Engineering Partner at SOM, will present this seminar in the 150 Years of Giant Leaps in Engineering series, on February 19th at 4:30 p.m. in Fowler Hall. Students are invited to a meet & greet with Mr. Baker earlier that day from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in Hampton Hall's Wood Commons.

The 105th Purdue Road School will be held March 4-7 on the Purdue University campus. This is a great Indiana tradition that brings together federal, state and local agencies, industry, consulting and academia to collaborate and reflect on diverse transportation topics. Over 3,000 attendees will have the opportunity to hear Opening Session and Luncheon keynote addresses from leaders in the transportation field, choose from nearly 200 hours of technical sessions, visit a variety of exhibitors, and network with their peers.

Kumares C. Sinha, Olson Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering, has been recognized by Jadavpur University, India, at the commemoration of its 60th anniversary, as a Distinguished University Alumnus.

Shuai Li (PhD '17), Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, has been named the recipient of the ASCE Collingwood Prize for his paper entitled, "Integrating Natural Language Processing and Spatial Reasoning for Utility Compliance Checking," published in the Journal of Construction Engineering and Management.

Professor Steven Kramer of the University of Washington will deliver the 17th Leonards Lecture, "Performance-Based Geotechnical Seismic Design," on April 26th. The PGS Workshop, with a theme of "Geotechnics of Natural Hazards," will be held in conjunction with the lecture.

Idling in a long highway line of slowed or stopped traffic on a busy highway can be more than an inconvenience for drivers and highway safety officers. It is one of the most vulnerable times for "secondary accidents," which often can be worse than an original source of the slowdown, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration. In fact, secondary crashes go up by a factor of almost 24 during the time that highway safety officials are assessing and documenting the crash site.

Sayan Dey, a PhD student in hydraulics and hydrology, has been selected as Purdue's 2018 Esri Development Center (EDC) Student of the Year for his work on "Watershed scale River Channel Morphology Model: An ArcMap tool for automated generation of river channel geometry."

Assistant Professor Brandon Boor's research on babies stirring up clouds of bio-gunk when they crawl has been featured as one of the top 10 Purdue research news stories of 2018.

Rebecca S. McDaniel, P.E., Ph.D., technical director at the North Central Superpave Center at Purdue University, has been elected to the board of directors of ASTM International, an international standards organization that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems, and services.

Holiday drivers who find that roadwork is driving them crazy may find in future years that a Purdue University-affiliated startup can seal the deal for a merrier journey. Environmental Concrete Products is a startup based on a Purdue innovation, with funding for the Indiana Soybean Alliance, which uses engineering sealant technology to protect and prolong the life of new and existing concrete to make a smoother ride for travelers and save costs for road upkeep and repairs.

The Center for Security Research and Education (CSRE) at Penn State University has announced that Caitlin Grady (PhD 2015), assistant professor of civil engineering, has been selected as the center's inaugural Faculty Fellow. The fellowship will provide funding beginning in January 2019 for Grady’s security-related research.

Purdue civil engineering students took first place in the 2018 International Bridge Competition, tied with Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. The team consisted of undergraduate students Hassan Bin Ammar, Eshana Kolli, Ziyan Lu, Darryl Sexton, Tianlong Sun, Ertica Susanto, Charley Yang, and PhD student Kinsey Skillen. Support for the team was provided by Prof. Santiago Pujol, Associate Professor Ayhan Irfanoglu, and Visiting Professor Luis Fargier.