Student Paper Competition

2024 Submissions are closed | 2025 Call for Abstracts will open on October 7, 2024

DFI and the DFI Educational Trust annually hold a Student Paper Competition, which is open to graduate and undergraduate students of engineering and construction.

Competition Details

All students with abstracts submitted will be included in the paper competition, unless the subject matter is deemed inappropriate. Papers will be judged based on their submitted drafts. Comments will be offered to the winning paper author for preparation of the final version.

The individual contest winner will be invited to attend the DFI Annual Conference on Deep Foundations to present her/his paper. Conference registration, two nights of lodging and a $1,000 stipend for travel expenses will be provided to the winner. Both the winner and runners-up are invited to submit their papers for publication in the DFI Journal and will have access to a library of up to 20 DFI publications and a gratis two-year Individual Membership in DFI.

man and women smiling and holding plaques

Criteria for Submissions

  1. Student must be enrolled in an accredited college or university in an undergraduate or graduate program.
  2. Focus of study must be engineering/construction/geological sciences.
  3. Paper must be based on student’s own work, and in her/his own writing.
  4. Paper must be primarily concerned with the design and construction of deep foundations/excavations.

Award Recipients

Some Young Professor Paper Competition award recipients have their papers available for purchase online at the DFI Journal.

Award Year Recipient Affiliation

2022

Jared Martinez
University of Portland

2021

Western University London, Ontario, Canada

2020

University of California, Irvine

2019

University of Bristol, Bristol, U.K.

2018

Ryerson University

2017

University of South Florida

2016

Oregon State University

2015

University of South Florida

2014

University of California, Los Angeles

2013

University of Oklahoma

2012

University of Akron

2011

Fawad Niazi
Georgia Institute of Technology

2010

Jeremy Kress
North Carolina State University

2009

Paul Doherty
University College Dublin

2008

Thomas L. Vande Voort
Iowa State University

2007

Ehab S. Shatnawi
University of Akron

2006

James A. Schneider
University of Western Australia

2005

Emre Biringen
University of Wisconsin-Madison

2004

Martina Balic
Rutgers University

2003

Gary Weinstein
Polytechnic University
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