Forty-eight teams headed to 25th National Student Steel Bridge Competition

Chicago — Forty-eight student engineering teams will converge at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, May 27-28 to compete in the 2016 ASCE/AISC National Student Steel Bridge Competition (NSSBC). This year, 223 university and college teams from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, China and the United Arab Emirates participated in a total of 18 regional competitions, and the top teams from each region will put their skills on display at the national level.

This year marks a quarter-century of the competition, which has evolved from a small academic competition in Michigan to a national showcase of skill and ingenuity that preps students for real-world bridge design.

"The competition is an exciting visual display of students' structural design and analysis skills at work," said Nancy Gavlin, AISC's director of education. Teams are challenged to design, fabricate and construct their own one-tenth-scale steel bridge in the shortest time and under specific building constraints that reflect real-life structural specifications and construction regulations. Bridge rankings are based on a variety of factors including construction cost, construction speed, total bridge weight and bridge stiffness.

This year's qualifying teams are:

• Arkansas State University
• Brigham Young University
• California Polytechnic State University, Pomona
• California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
• California State University, Northridge
• Clemson University
• Colorado School of Mines
• Cooper Union
• Drexel University
• École de technologie supérieure
• George Mason University
• George Washington University
• Illinois Institute of Technology
• Kennesaw State University
• Lafayette College
• Lakehead University
• Michigan Technological University
• Missouri University of Science and Technology
• North Carolina State University
• Oregon State University
• Polytechnic Institute of New York University
• Southern Illinois University Carbondale
• Southern Methodist University
• SUNY at Buffalo
• Texas A&M University
• Tongji University
• Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México
• Université Laval
• The University of Akron
• University of Alaska – Fairbanks
• University of British Columbia
• University of California, Berkeley
• University of Connecticut
• University of Florida
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• University of Michigan
• University of Missouri – Columbia
• University of New Hampshire
• University of Puerto Rico – Mayaguez
• University of Tennessee – Knoxville
• University of Tennessee at Martin
• University of Utah
• University of Wisconsin – Madison
• University of Wisconsin, Platteville
• Utah State University
• West Virginia University
• Western Kentucky University
• Youngstown State University

Learn more about the competition at www.aisc.org/nssbc.