Airport Technology’s own Dr. Navneet Garg has been named as recipient of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Transportation and Development Institute (T&DI)’s 2018 Airfield Pavements Practitioner Award.
Dr. Garg’s honor is a particularly unique one. While the award is usually given to pavement engineer practitioners and seldom to researchers, his research stands out in its practical nature and real world utility.
Dr. Garg emphasizes the importance of sharing research findings with airport pavement engineering professionals. As both Vice Chair of the Airfield Pavements Committee of ASCE and Chairman of the International Society of Asphalt Pavements (ISAP) Working Group on Accelerated Pavement Testing (APT), he arranges TRB sessions and other opportunities “to bring researchers and the practitioner together in one forum.” Dr. Garg recently brought participants from Directorate General of Civil Aviation (France), Airbus, and Boeing together with researchers and practicing engineers at pavement materials and design workshop in Brazil. He has also served multiple three-year terms as a member on TRB committees including Accelerated Pavement Testing (AFD40), General and Emerging Pavement Design (AFD30), Geotechnical Instrumentation and Modeling (AFS20), and Aggregates (AFP70).
Through the Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP), Dr. Garg proudly mentors one or two students each year via one-year research grants to investigate airport pavement-related projects. Shear failures in asphalt surfaces and life cycle assessment of airport pavements are just a couple of many collaborations to date.
Dr. Garg’s pavement engineering expertise and leadership capabilities have been honed during his 21-year tenure at the FAA (nine years as a support contractor and 12 years as an FAA employee). He started working at the National Airport Pavement Test Facility (NAPTF) in 1998, and would later propose an outdoor testing facility concept that has vastly expanded FAA’s pavement testing capabilities—the world class HVS-A “Mark VI” and the National Airport Pavement Research Center (NAPMRC), which was approved in 2009 and completed in 2015. He attributes the success of NAPMRC and other endeavors to supportive colleagues and management. Dr. Garg manages both the NAPMRC and Field Instrumentation and Testing programs for the Airport Technology Research and Development branch.
The Airfield Pavement Practitioner Award will be presented to Dr. Garg at the ASCE T&DI International Airfield and Highway Pavements Conference in Chicago, IL (July 21-24, 2019).