• May 01, 2023

    WSU Student Researcher win First Prize in Student Data Analysis Contest

    Chuang Chen, a Graduate Research Assistant from Washington State University, recently won first prize in the 2022 Long-Term Infrastructure Performance (LTIP) Student Data Analysis Contest (Pavement). Chen won with a paper titled, Key Climatic Factors Affecting Asphalt Pavement Roughness Differ in Different Climate Regions: Exploratory Analyses, which explored the use of multiple techniques for big data processing and subsequent exploratory analyses, and investigated the relationships between climatic factors and a typical asphalt pavement distress – roughness. This study also tested the hypothesis that key climatic factors affecting asphalt pavement roughness differ in different regions.

    The contest, hosted by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), is designed to encourage university students to use pavement performance data to study the various factors affecting pavement lifecycles, and to develop a technical paper to document their research. Winners receive travel and accommodations to the  Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) in Washington, D.C, and are publicly recognized during the LTPP Program lectern session.