AISC Accepting Nominations for 2025 Higgins Lectureship Award
CHICAGO – AISC is now accepting nominations for its T.R. Higgins Lectureship Award, which includes a $15,000 cash prize. The annual award recognizes a lecturer-author whose technical paper(s) are considered an outstanding contribution to engineering literature on fabricated structural steel.
“Theodore R. Higgins made invaluable contributions to the advancement of engineering, both as AISC’s director of engineering and research and through his technical papers and lectures,” said AISC’s current Vice President of Engineering and Research, Christopher Raebel, SE, PE, PhD. “The T.R. Higgins Lectureship Award is a fitting way to honor that legacy and continue the spirit of innovation that he embodied.”
The award will be given to a nominated individual based on their reputation as a lecturer and the jury’s evaluation of the paper(s) named in the nomination. Papers will be judged for originality, clarity of presentation, contribution to engineering knowledge, future significance, and value to the fabricated structural steel industry.
The submission deadline is July 1; nominations can be submitted online using this form. If you’d prefer to mail your submission, contact AISC’s Martin Downs at [email protected]. Nominations must include the name and affiliation of the nominee, a summary of why the nominee deserves consideration, the titles and full publication citation for his/her/their outstanding paper(s), and a copy of the paper(s) in question as well as any published discussion.
The author must be a permanent resident of the U.S. and available to fulfill the commitments of the award. The paper(s) must have been published in a professional journal between January 1, 2019, and January 1, 2024. The winner is required to attend and present at 2025 NASCC: The Steel Conference April 2-4 in Louisville, Ky., and give a minimum of six presentations of their lecture on selected occasions during the year.
The current T.R. Higgins Lecturer is Benjamin Schafer, PE, PhD, who received the award for his paper titled “Review of Local Buckling Width-to-Thickness Limits,” as well as for his outstanding reputation as an engineer and lecturer. His March 22 keynote at NASCC: The Steel Conference in San Antonio helped better make local area buckling understandable. “He took what is usually seen as a dry, academic subject and kept an audience of nearly 1,000 riveted to his every word,” said Scott Melnick, AISC’s senior vice president. If your organization is interested in hosting a T.R. Higgins lecture, please contact Christina Harber, AISC’s senior director of education, at [email protected].
For more information about the award, visit aisc.org/higgins.
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For more information contact:
Dani Friedland
Director of Marketing Communications
773.636.8535
[email protected]
About the American Institute of Steel Construction
The American Institute of Steel Construction, headquartered in Chicago, is a non-partisan, not-for-profit technical institute and trade association established in 1921 to serve the structural steel design community and construction industry. AISC’s mission is to make structural steel the material of choice by being the leader in structural steel-related technical and market-building activities, including specification and code development, research, education, technical assistance, quality certification, standardization, market development, and advocacy. AISC has a long tradition of service to the steel construction industry of providing timely and reliable information.
