Navneet Garg

CEEAA Distinguished Alumni Award, 2023

For demonstrated leadership and many noteworthy achievements in civil, transportation and pavement engineering; for conceptualization and development of the National Airport Pavement and Materials Research Center (NAPMRC) and the Asphalt Pavement Analyzer (APA) for airport asphalt mixes; for outstanding contributions to the advancement of the field of transportation engineering and leadership roles in professional organizations; and for dedication to mentoring and training of the next-generation of engineers.

Biography

Dr. Navneet Garg is a Program Manager in Airport Technology R&D Branch at the Federal Aviation Administration’s William J. Hughes Technical Center (FAA WJHTC) in Atlantic City, N.J., and manages projects on Full-Scale Accelerated Pavement Testing, Field Instrumentation and Testing, and Pavement Materials. Garg earned his Ph.D. (1997) from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; M.S. (1993) from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago; and B.E (1990) from Karnataka Regional Engineering College, Suratkal, India, all in Civil Engineering.

He has been actively involved in airport pavement research at FAA’s National Airport Pavement Test Facility since 1998, and conceptualized/developed FAA’s National Airport Pavement & Materials Research Center – a $9 million state-of-the-art research facility. He led the congressionally mandated study on “Operational Life of Airport Pavements.” Garg has authored over 100 research papers for various peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. He teaches airport pavement design and evaluation workshops for various national and international organizations.  In addition to being a member of several Ph.D. and M.S. thesis committees, he has mentored high school students under STEM program and summer interns at FAA WJHTC, and ACRP Student Grant recipients.

His honors include FAA’s 23rd Annual Ellis A. Ohnstad Award for Technical Excellence (2022),  2018 ASCE T&DI Airfield Pavements Practitioner of the Year award (ASCE), and the 2004 Engineer of the Year award (Southern New Jersey Professional Societies AIAA, IEEE, and IEEE Computer Society). He is a Fellow of ASCE, past Chair of ASCE Airfield Pavements Committee, on Board of Directors of International Society for Asphalt Pavements (ISAP), and member of TRB Committees, and Associate Editor of International Journal of Pavement Engineering (IJPE). He is a founding member of non-profit organization EduContests (educontests.org), and volunteers for North South Foundation (northsouth.org).