ASCE has honored Melinda Luna, P.E., M.ASCE, with the 2019 Civil Engineering History and Heritage Award for outstanding contributions to history and heritage research, hundreds of articles written on civil engineering history, and provision of a better knowledge and appreciation of the history and heritage of civil engineering, including outside of the civil engineering community.
Over the past 20 years, Luna has researched and written over 200 detailed articles on civil engineering history. She recently collected over 800 bridge damage and failure details from newspaper articles and assembled them into a geospatial database that she presented on the various types of failures, showing how history can be used to understand risk.
Luna exemplifies the purpose of the award: to recognize people who write, research and present the history of civil engineering.
The Civil Engineering History and Heritage Award is presented to those persons who, through writing, research or other efforts, have made outstanding contributions to a better knowldge of, or appreciation for, the history and heritage of civil engineering.
