The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) this year has inducted four faculty members from the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering at the University of Florida as ASCE Fellows: Denise R. Simmons, Lily Elefteriadou, Kyle Riding and Scott S. Washburn, all Ph.D.s.
The professors are now among the 3% of ASCE members who are Fellows and are among nine ASCE Fellows at UF. To be selected as an ASCE Fellow, candidates must have served a minimum of 10 years as a member of the organization and hold a Professional Engineer (P.E.) license.
Simmons, the latest UF inductee, is the associate dean for workforce development with UF’s College of Engineering and a professor in the Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure & Environment. Her passion is workforce development. Simmons is also a fellow with the American Society for Engineering Education.
She has led several National Science Foundation-funded projects, including a prestigious CAREER Award for investigating co-curricular participation of underrepresented students in engineering.
A triple graduate of Clemson University, Simmons started her career in the energy and public utility sector serving large revenue industrial clients and municipal utilities.
Her honors and awards include the 2019 Thomas Green Clemson Academy of Engineers and Scientists induction, 2019 Distinguished Clemson Alumni in Civil Engineering and the 2018 Myers Lawson School of Construction Diversity Award.
Elefteriadou is the former director of the UF Transportation Institute (UFTI) and the Barbara Goldsby Professor of Civil Engineering. Her research areas are traffic management, traffic simulation and advanced technologies in transportation, and she has contributed to numerous federal and state projects on congestion mitigation. She also has written about 200 publications and the textbook, “Introduction to Traffic Flow Theory.”
She has served as chair of the Transportation Research Board’s Highway Capacity and Quality of Service Committee. She also served on the Executive Board of the Council of University Transportation Centers and was the 2014-2015 president of the ARTBA Research and Education Council.
Elefteriadou also created the I-STREET Living Lab, an open-road testing facility for UF and the city of Gainesville to innovate solutions to transportation mobility and safety. Its success is recognized by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) and gained $10 million in funding to continue research and education to advance new technologies alongside transportation companies.
Riding is a professor and department head of Civil and Coastal Engineering, as well as interim director of UF’s Transportation Institute.
Before coming to UF, Riding was on the faculty at Kansas State University for eight years. He received his bachelor’s degree in civil & environmental engineering from Brigham Young University in 2002 and his master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in Civil Engineering in 2004 and 2007, respectively. His expertise is in concrete material science, concrete construction and concrete structural repair.
He is a recognized expert in alternative supplementary cementitious materials, early-age concrete properties, concrete durability and mass concrete construction. He is the chair of the American Concrete Institute committee 231 Properties of Concrete at Early Ages and is a voting member of ACI committees 201 Durability of Concrete, 207 Mass and Thermally Controlled Concrete, 236 Material Science of Concrete and 318A Structural Concrete Building Code General, Concrete and Construction.
He served as chair of the Precast/ Prestressed Concrete Institute Concrete Materials Technology Committee from 2016-2025 and as chair of the American Ceramic Society Cements Division from 2013-2014. He is a member of the ASCE Committee on Concrete Canoe Competitions. He received the Wason Medal for Materials Research from the American Concrete Institute in 2011 and 2023, and the Young Member Award for Professional Development in 2013. He is a fellow of ACI and the American Society of Civil Engineers, as well as a registered professional engineer in Florida, Kansas, and Nebraska.
Washburn, a professor with UF’s Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering, was honored for decades of leadership and outstanding contributions to civil engineering.
Also a transportation engineer, Washburn has served for more than 25 years as a professor, teaching nearly 1,500 undergraduate and graduate students. Washburn has been a co-author of the textbook “Principles of Highway Engineering and Traffic Analysis,” which has sold more than 45,000 copies since 2004 and is used at more than 140 universities.
“It is a great honor to be recognized with the Fellow status by ASCE, an organization that has had an incredible impact on society and the profession of civil engineering over its long and rich history,” he said.
Washburn has made a significant impact in the transportation profession, primarily in the areas of traffic operations analysis and simulation modeling.
Washburn is also co-author of a popular textbook on highway engineering and traffic analysis – “Principles of Highway Engineering and Traffic Analysis, 7th Edition.”
“The textbook is the No. 1 selling book in its market—more than 45,000 copies have been sold since 2004 and it has been adopted by instructors at over 140 different colleges/universities worldwide,” Washburn said earlier this year.
As a researcher, Washburn has been a trailblazer in traffic analysis and has made important contributions that have been included in the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM).