May 18, 2016

(Chicago, IL) - 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.Watch AISC's video commemorating 25 years of the competition.

“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.