The Annual Long-Term Infrastructure Performance (LTIP) Student Data Analysis Contest

Encouraging Undergraduate and Graduate Students to Explore a Career in Pavement Engineering.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is pleased to announce the LTIP Student Data Analysis Contest, designed to encourage university students to use pavement performance data to study the various factors affecting pavement lifecycles, and to develop a technical paper to document their research.

Students must use LTPP InfoPave™ to investigate a topic that advances pavement performance. Some suggested topics include “Concerns Faced by a Region or State,” “Multidisciplinary Approach To Address Transportation Infrastructure Resilience and Sustainability,” “Condition Forecasting Models,” and “Role of Preservation in Extending Service Life of Highway Infrastructure Assets.” Papers should use the following Transportation Research Board (TRB) formatting requirements:

• Format papers as Adobe® Acrobat™ PDFs.
• Submit all papers in English.
• Include a title page with title, authors, affiliations, and word count.
• Include all coauthor names, affiliations, and email addresses.
• Embed tables and figures in the text, near the text that discusses the item.
• Use an 8.5-inch-by-11-inch page with normal margins.
• Capitalize the first letter of each word in the title, except for conjunctions, prepositions, and articles.
• Use Times New Roman font, 10-point size or larger.
• Single space all papers.
• Number lines (restart numbering on each page).
• Number pages.
• Do not exceed 7,500 words, including the abstract, text, acknowledgments, references, and tables. Each table counts as 250 words. Papers not meeting this requirement may be withdrawn from the peer review process at any time. Abstracts should not exceed 250 words.
• Number all references and call them out in numerical order in the text.

Please note that students should not have their names in the header or footer, and they should not include acknowledgments in the body of the paper. However, students may recognize other individuals or organizations in the cover letter.

View the sample paper taken from TRB. Please note that while the sample paper refers to TRB in the title, this is not a TRB paper. FHWA is sponsoring this contest. Submit papers by email to LTIPStudentContest@dot.gov by August 1, 11:59 p.m. EST of the calendar year.

We look forward to your participation in this year’s contest. For more information, contact Deborah Walker at 202–493–3068 or deborah.walker@dot.gov.