Steve Underwood, project manager with joint venture MTI, is orchestrating the span-by-span lift and assembly sequence for superstructure erection on the $1.2-billion widening of the Huey P. Long Bridge over the Mississippi River at New Orleans.

For Timothy A. Reinhold, senior vice president of research and chief engineer at the Institute for Business and Home Safety’s newly commissioned, $40-million test facility in Chester County, S.C., the hurricane that blew through the lab on Oct. 18 and tore a two-story house to shreds was a joy to behold.

After more than 30 years of research, invention, fieldwork and development, civil engineer Alan P. Jeary finally saw the hardware and software he developed commercialized in 2010.

The ancient Inca built a complex system of roads that span some 20,000 miles and range in altitude from sea level to 14,000 feet, all without the benefit of special tools or even a formal writing system.

Dr. David Rempel led a team of researchers from the University of California in San Francisco and Berkeley that developed an 'inverted' drill press.

Following Hurricane Katrina’s 2005 attack on New Orleans, the best minds in the international water-resources industry began seeking innovative ways to rebuild the city’s storm-surge defenses.

While a penniless college student in Texas, Hong Kong native Dennis C.K. Poon’s first gig in the U.S. paid $2 an hour.

Gary Fore, a now retired vice president of the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA), Lanham, Md., leads a voluntary partnership of asphalt-paving industry organizations that is researching and recommending ways to cut down the amount of silica dust generated by asphalt-milling machines in advance of federal safety and health regulations.

Dwayne Smith, a senior engineer at URS Corp., San Francisco, is a geotechnical program manager on a levee enlargement project in New Orleans that is shaving a decade off the time it normally takes to build and consolidate such a structure.