It is a source of pride for many at APTech to be engaged in the engineering community beyond the day-to-day requirements of their job. This often involves sitting on committees, attending conferences, and keeping professional affiliations up to date. Others have served as mentors to local STEM programs, related competitions, or provided tutoring within their community. This year David Peshkin, Vice President and Chief Engineer of APTech, contributed to the pavement engineering profession by serving as a judge for the Airport Cooperative Research Program’s (ACRP) University Design Competition for Addressing Airport Needs.

The ACRP’s competition is a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) funded program held every year. The competition goals are as follows:

1. Raise awareness of the benefits of the ACRP and the importance of airports and the FAA to the National Airspace infrastructure.

2. Increase the involvement of the academic community in the ACRP and addressing airport operations and infrastructure issues and needs.

3. Engage students at U.S. colleges and universities in the conceptualization of applications, systems and equipment capable of addressing related challenges in a robust, reliable and comprehensive manner.

4. Encourage undergraduate and graduate students at U.S. colleges and universities to contribute innovative ideas and solutions to issues facing airports and the National Airspace System.

5. Provide a framework and incentives for quality educational experiences for university students.

6. Develop an awareness of and interest in airports and aviation as vital challenging areas for careers in engineering and technology.

Over the past 14 years, David has been involved as a judge in the Airport Operation and Maintenance Challenges section. Every year this section sees papers that are submitted on a broad range of topics; on average, there are between ten to twenty submittals to review, all within forty-five pages. This year the seven entries covered the following topics:

• Unmanned aircraft systems for pavement condition inspection and foreign object debris detection.

• An approach for developing and maintaining airport pavement.

• Airport symbol guide.

• Battery swapping for electric vertical take-off and landing aircrafts.

• Allocating external alternatives aircraft taxiing system.

• Simulation tool for on-demand urban air mobility.

• Radar air cannons as an innovation solution to bird strikes.

The Design Competition is open to teams or individuals from accredited United States colleges and universities who are working with a faculty advisor. This allowed for many universities to turn this competition into a capstone project. Additionally, universities will use this for undergraduate classes not directly linked to aviation, to introduce them to a broad-cross section of students and ideas in the aviation industry. 

“Judging this competition every year has been a truly interesting experience,” David said. “It provides a wonderful window into the potential future of airport maintenance and operations. Additionally, we get a chance to personally witness and recruit the next wave of innovative engineers.”

The 2022 competition was open for student participation from August 2021 through May 12, 2022. This allowed for participation during fall semester of 2021 and/or the spring semester of 2022. The final due date for all submittals was May 13, 2022, and the judging took place at the Keck Center in Washington D.C. In the past, winning teams have been invited to make a presentation on their work at an Airports Consultants Council workshop.