The Kiewit Center for Infrastructure and Transportation was established in 1962 as the Transportation Research Institute. The Kiewit Center serves as the umbrella organization for nearly all research within the School of Civil and Construction Engineering, coordinating multi- and inter-disciplinary research projects.
Research
Learn more about the center and research in pavements, transportation, and infrastructure materials.
The Kiewit Center for Infrastructure and Transportation was initially established in 1962 as the Transportation Research Institute. The Center coordinates multi- and inter-disciplinary research projects and delivers a wide variety of educational and workforce development programs. Professor David Hurwitz has served as the Director of the Kiewit Center since 2021.
The National Summer Transportation Institute (NSTI) Program is an initiative developed by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to introduce high school students to transportation-related careers via elaborately designed, hands-on learning experiences. The Kiewit Center leads an NSTI offering in collaboration with the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and the STEM Academy at OSU. Since 2020, 50 rising 9th through 12th graders have been able to attend a week-long summer camp, through which they have visited transportation infrastructure and active projects across the state, toured research laboratories on campus, and participated in a variety of hands-on learning activities facilitated by skilled program staff. Funding for the program is supported by a grant from the FHWA.
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The Kiewit Center coordinates an annual fellowship program for three PhD students conducting research in the areas of Civil, Construction, and Architectural Engineering. The fellowship program is designed to:
⦁ Attract and retain exceptional PhD student in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering;
⦁ Facilitate the success of junior faculty members in CCE; and
⦁ Promote the diversity, equity, and inclusion goals of CCE.
The fellowships are supported by a generous endowment from the Kiewit Corporation.
The Kiewit Center for Infrastructure and Transportation Research has been conducting a transportation safety continuing education program in partnership with ODOT for more than 40 years. The in-person workshops, online webinars, and technical assistance topics are centered on transportation safety; topics range from transportation engineering fundamentals to access management. Participation for workshops ranges from 30 to 150 attendees, depending on modality, with an average attendance of about 100. In 2022, the program added several new courses: Design for vulnerable (deaf/blind) pedestrians, HCM 7.0 Updates, Roadway Design, and a workshop focused in traffic signal design.
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The Northwest Transportation Conference (NWTC) is a biennial meeting held at OSU in Corvallis, Oregon since 1949. It has brought together multiple generations of transportation professionals (engineers, designers, builders, operators, planners, and others) with a common passion and purpose for improving the safety and efficiency of surface transportation in Oregon and beyond.
The conference represents sustained partnership between ODOT, OSU, Benton County, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), as well as other universities and transportation organizations in Oregon.
In recent years, the conference has drawn more than 300 participants during each three-day meeting.
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The Kiewit Center coordinates an Undergraduate Research Symposium each spring quarter for CCE students with undergraduate research appointments that broadly focus on work in construction engineering. Students work with their faculty mentors to produce posters summarizing their work, and then present that work to faculty in the construction engineering domain as well as to other interested students in the school.
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Kiewit Materials Performance Lab was designed to carry out sensitive bench-scale experiments to characterize various types of materials and investigate their deterioration mechanisms. Materials of interest involve cement/concrete, metals, alloys, polymers, coatings, asphalt and wood. The laboratory is equipped with grounded bench-top space, two high-performance fume hoods, an environmental test chamber, and electrochemical testing equipment (including potentiostats/galvanostats and FRAs for AC Impedance analysis). Among many other capabilities, the laboratory is fully equipped to conduct sensitive electrochemical investigations to study corrosion phenomena in metals/alloys and performance and durability of coatings and composite materials.
Outreach
In addition to conducting funded and unfunded research, the center provides a variety of outreach activities to support practicing professionals throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Oregon Traffic Safety, through Oregon DOT, has sponsored a traffic safety continuing education program with our center since 1979. Due to Covid-19 and recent retirements, the program is now offered through a series of webinars that permit participation by technical staff and professionals from the Northwest
The center participates in the Council of University Transportation Centers (CUTC) through the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans), which is a Regional University Transportation Center (UTC) for Federal Region X located at the University of Washington. Our participation provides opportunities to interact with other Northwest universities' transportation groups to address regional challenges.