Zhihua Yi is a Ph.D. student at the City College of New York. Mr. Yi’s Ph.D. thesis is on “Blast Loads on Highway Bridges: Mechanisms and Mitigations”. In this work, Mr. Yi has been working on modeling approaches for blast loads and behavior of bridges components during blast loads using highprecision Finite Element Analysis. Mr. Yi has developed a unique approach through which existing software from Department of Defense for blast loading can be used for highway bridges without any modification. In fact, detailed high-precision finite element model of a highway bridge developed by Mr.

Neha Mittal is a doctoral student in Transportation Engineering at Rutgers. Mittal holds a BA in Engineering from Gujarat University, India and BA in Transportation Engineering from Rutgers.

Brenda Cruz has been chosen as 2005 Student of the Year by the University Transportation Research Center. Students of the year are selected on technical merit, research, academic performance, professionalism, and leadership. Ms. Cruz was an outstanding participant in the NYSDOT sponsored university research project “Potential for Off-Peak Deliveries to Commercial Urban Areas”, which was conducted by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on behalf of NYSDOT and was presented at NYMTC last year. Ms. Cruz has also received national recognition as the recipient of the 2005 Charley V.