2011 Recipient:

Rene Testa is a graduate of McGill University (1959) and of Columbia University where he has been on the faculty in Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics since completing the doctorate in 1963. He was Chair of the Department (1995 to 2000) and he has been Director of the Carleton Laboratory for more than forty years. Dr. Testa's areas of expertise include stress, fatigue and fracture analysis, the design and analysis of structures and materials under static, cyclic and dynamic loads, and the use of methods of experimental mechanics in laboratory and field testing. He has taught theory, design and laboratory courses in these areas, and he was awarded the Great Teacher Award in 1986 by the Society of Columbia Graduates. Professor Testa has worked extensively on analyses of failures, most recently on the I35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, and on design projects, most recently the Roosevelt Island Tram assessment and replacement. He is a registered PE in NY and NJ and he has served on technical committees of ASCE, ASME, ASTM, SSRC and RILEM. His published basic research includes work on impact loading, composite materials, concrete modeling, constitutive models for structural fabrics, vibration methods to diagnose deterioration in structures, continuum damage mechanics, and models for optimal bridge management with application to New York City bridges. Professor Testa's involvement with NYC bridges began in the 1960's with extensive field and large-scale laboratory model testing on the Manhattan Bridge to develop ways to stiffen the bridge against twisting. Extensive strain gage testing was done in 1980-'81 to collect data to calibrate a computer model of the bridge. This data was also used to create a stiffened segment of the bridge for a fracture and fatigue analyses of the deck stiffening performed by Weidlinger Associates several years ago. More recently (2008), extensive acceleration and GPS motion monitoring of the Manhattan Bridge was performed (with colleague Dr. Andrew Smyth) mainly for seismic analysis, but also to observe the achieved reduction in the twist of the bridge under train loading. He has conducted much field and lab testing since then on many large bridges in NYC and elsewhere including the Throgs Neck, Whitestone, George Washington, Macombs Dam and Walt Whitman Bridges, including motion monitoring on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge during the 2004 NYC Marathon. In the 1980's, methods of main cable strand replacement on the Brooklyn Bridge were developed using conventional zinc and resin socketing within a full sized mock-up in the Carleton Lab of the very confined space of the anchorage. Similar procedures were developed and tested in the Lab for the Triborough Bridge anchorages and applied in 1982 with Dr. Testa and colleague Dr. M.P. Bieniek directly supervising the process and doing the actual zinc pour for the sockets in the anchorage. Significant numbers of students have had exposure to NYC bridges through these projects and others in the Carleton Lab, including tests conducted in relation to the Mianus River Bridge collapse, the Hyatt Regency skywalk collapse, large-scale bridge deck fatigue testing, and the Williamsburg Bridge rehabilitation. Many of those students have gone on to become prominent structural engineers.

Past Recipients: