Approximately one in three U.S. bridges needs repair or replacement. At the current pace of repair, it would take nearly 68 years to do that at a price tag estimated at more than $42 billion.
As federal and state officials grapple with the enormity of the problem, bridge engineering expert Atorod Azizinamini is working with colleagues across the country to find innovative solutions to our nation’s infrastructure woes.
A leader in the field, Azizinamini created FIU’s first Department of Transportation- funded University Transportation Center, the Accelerated Bridge Construction University Transportation Center (ABC-UTC), in 2013. Today the center’s monthly webinars attract thousands of bridge professionals and its annual conference hundreds of participants.
Building off the success of the ABC-UTC, Azizinamini proposed and competed for the federally funded, tier one Innovative Bridge Technologies/Accelerated Bridge Construction-University Transportation Center (IBT/ABC-UTC), one of only 20 tier one UTCs that were funded recently.
The new center will bring together experts from FIU, Florida A&M University, Texas A&M, University of Georgia, University of Nevada- Reno, University of Oklahoma and University of Washington to collaborate more intentionally in advancing next-generation bridge engineering. Faculty and students will work on applications of leading-edge technologies such as automation, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, drones, magnetic-based methods and ultra-high performance concrete.
Atorod Azizinamini
Director of Infrastructure, Research and Innovation, Vasant Surti Professor of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering & Computing
"Bridge engineering 10, 20 years from now is not going to be anything similar to what we have today because of the disruptive technologies coming into the market on a daily basis.”