ASCE has honored David Noyce, Ph.D., P.E., F.ASCE, with the 2026 James Laurie Prize for more than 25 years of providing extraordinary leadership at many levels – internally at the University of Wisconsin as the chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, as the executive director of the Traffic Operations and Safety Laboratory, and currently as the executive associate dean of the College of Engineering, as well as externally in many different capacities, including leading Transportation Research Board programs, planning, policy analysis, and decision-making.
Of particular note is that Noyce has stayed active in his contributions to the profession even after receiving a number of accolades in the field – from receiving the Wilbur S. Smith Distinguished Transportation Educator Award in 2025 to being elected as an ITE Fellow in 2017 to receiving the 2014 Patricia F. Waller Award from TRB for the best paper in traffic safety and systems users. Indeed, his passion for contributing to our profession is inspiring. He continually finds ways in which he might be able to give back to his chosen profession and to society at large. This is also evidenced in his wide-ranging contributions from transportation systems research to traffic safety to connected/automated vehicles.
He has published more than 125 papers on these and other topics. This ability to work at a high scholarly level, as well as his aptitude for, and gift of, bringing researchers from multiple fields together to pursue a common interdisciplinary vision are nothing short of legendary and “awe inspiring.”
But perhaps most important to our profession is the tremendous impact Noyce has had on nurturing and producing generations of very high-quality researchers. As an educator, he has inspired and advised a stream of students (19 Ph.D. students and 50 M.S. students, to be precise) who have gone on to become leaders in the field today.
The James Laurie Prize recognizes contributions to the advancement of transportation engineering in research, planning, design, or construction.
