Duke Students Named ‘Bridge Team of the Year’
A Duke student team won Engineers in Action's "Bridge Team of the Year" in 2021
At the 2021 Engineers in Action (EIA) Bridge Builder Conference, the Duke chapter was named “Bridge Team of the Year.” The winning team is advised by Professor of the Practice of civil and environmental engineering David Schaad.
Schaad teaches the popular “Engineering Sustainable Design and the Global Community” course, cross-listed with public policy and environmental science, each spring. A number of students, including those who belong to Duke Engineers for International Development (DEID), enroll in this course and spend the semester designing projects like bridges, clinics and water catchment systems over the course of the semester. In the summer, some of them travel and live abroad, working with engineers in a host community to revise and implement their designs.
Despite being unable to travel internationally, the Duke chapter of EIA advanced a pedestrian bridge project in Bolivia through design, cultural relations and safety reports. The bridge was successfully implemented by volunteers and the local community. A vehicular bridge in West Virginia advanced in the same ways, by Duke students who interned with EIA in lieu of traveling. That project was completed in person this summer.
Students on the winning team are:
- Luna Amador
- Kaela Basmajian
- Isabel Beariault
- Grace Brach
- Woodley Burrow
- Katie Drinkwater
- Yunyi Feng
- Alex Fine
- Eric Fiorenzone
- Luis Graterol
- Lauren Horvath
- Cordelia Kim
- Dea Luca
- Matthew Lenihan
- Ezra Melaku
- Lucas Miller
- Nicole Puno
- Gopi Ramanathan
- Ava Rimmer-Parla
- Destin Saba
- Charlotte Sendek
- Spencer Schutz
- Hana Frank Audrey Smith
- Nikita Suri
- Sarah Wan
- Luke Wheeler
- Peyton Worthington
- Jessica Xia