ASCE has honored Samuel Labi, Ph.D., F.ASCE, with the 2025 Wilbur S. Smith Award for his significant contributions in the past fiscal year and beyond, particularly longstanding mentoring of ASCE and T&DI student chapters, editorial roles for ASCE T&DI journals, ICTD Conference planning, leadership of T&DI’s Council on Planning and Development, and highway-related research.
Labi is a professor at Purdue’s Lyles School of Civil Engineering. He is currently the director of the Smart Transport and Infrastructure Research Lab, the FHWA Center of Excellence in Project Finance (Midwest Region), and the U.S. Department of Transportation Next-Generation Transportation Systems Center as well as associate director of the USDOT Center for Connected & Automated Transportation.
He has authored two textbooks: Transportation Decision Making (2008) and Civil Engineering Systems (2014), both published by Wiley and adopted at several universities worldwide for course instruction; research articles in reputable journals including those by ASCE AT&DI; book chapters; refereed conference articles; and 60 research reports. He has given over 300 presentations at ASCE and other conferences, and several invited lectures or presentations at special events.
His journal editorial roles have included assistant/associate editor, guest editor, and editorial board member, for journals including Computer-Aided Civil & Infrastructure Engineering, Safety Science, Infrastructure Systems, and Risk & Uncertainty Part A. Also, he chairs ASCE’s Transportation & Development Council and is immediate past chair of T&DI’s committee on Economics & Finance and past vice president of the Transportation Research Forum.
The Wilbur S. Smith Award recognizes contributions to the enhancement of the civil engineer’s role in highway engineering.
