Institute for Transportation

Bridge Engineering Center (BEC) graduate student and research assistant Shadi Azad and her advisor BEC Structural Engineer Behrouz Shafei earned the top prize in the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA’s) Long-Term Infrastructure Performance (LTIP) Student Data Analysis Contest.

The contest, aimed at students exploring a career in pavement or bridge engineering, encourages students to use pavement or bridge performance data to study factors affecting pavement or bridge life cycles and then develop papers to document that research.

Azad’s winning paper used bridge data from the FHWA InfoHighway web portal, as required, and was entitled, “Data-Enabled Joint Condition Assessment of Bridges with Integral Abutments and Tied Approach Slabs.”

“I’m incredibly grateful for this honor and excited about the opportunity to contribute to advancements in bridge infrastructure assessment,” Azad said. “A heartfelt thank you to my advisor, Dr. Behrouz Shafei, for his invaluable guidance and support throughout this research journey.”

Additionally, as part of winning the competition, Azad presented the paper at TRB’s Annual Meeting in early January 2025.

The FHWA’s LTIP Student Data Analysis Contest began in 2021. This contest is part of the FHWA’s long-term effort to help the bridge community further understand bridge performance characteristics based on various sources of data. Azad and Shafei were the first place winners in 2024 in the bridge section.