NYU Tandon’s ASCE Concrete Canoe and Steel Bridge teams continue to dominate the region

Each year, the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) and American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) challenge student teams across the nation to conceive, design, fabricate, erect, and test a steel bridge that meets competition specifications and optimizes performance and economy. In the process, participants gain experience with real-world engineering issues, including spatial constraints, material properties, strength, serviceability, safety, aesthetics, and project management.

In a separate competition, ASCE challenges students to design, build, and race a canoe that will float — despite being made of concrete, a material that most lay people assume would sink upon being placed in water. And if you think it’s not easy to build a canoe from concrete that actually floats, try getting it to a body of water when you’re in the middle of a large, urban campus.

Enter members of the Steel Bridge team, who happened to have on hand the 20-foot structure they had constructed for last year’s competition – just large enough to form the basis for a motorized platform that made easy work of transporting the 19.5-foot vessel.

“There are many things we have to be proud of this year; we went from 10 members to almost 40, and the team grew to include students from many majors in addition to Civil Engineering, such as Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering,” Alex Huang, the captain of the Concrete Canoe team, says. “And I’m really proud that we were able to collaborate with members of the Steel Bridge team. Their practical help and moral support made all the difference to us.

That admiration is mutual. “We were each other’s biggest cheerleaders,” Miguel Valle and Sofia Estrada, Steel Bridge co-project managers, say. “We came out to watch each other practice, which was a major motivator for everyone to step up their games, and we ended up building a real community.”

Magued Iskander, the chair of the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering, also counts himself as a cheerleader. “Everyone involved in both competitions showed incredible dedication, innovation, and teamwork,” he says. “We are proud of their achievements, grateful to NYU Tandon's Vertically Integrated Projects program for giving both teams a home and support, and eager to see even greater success in the future!”

Concrete Canoe

Results:

The team not only came in first overall in the 2025 Metropolitan Conference, but also earned first place in all categories, including Final Product, Technical Presentation, and Project Proposal. This marks an astonishing eight first-place finishes in the past decade. (The 2020 event was canceled due to the pandemic.)

Innovations:

Improving upon last year’s entry, which was carbon neutral, this year’s canoe was carbon negative, thanks to the incorporation of CO₂-sequestered steel slag, which is itself normally considered an unusable waste product. Additionally, the computer science majors on the team devised an AI-powered paddling improvement system involving wearable sensors.

Advisors:

Industry Professor Weihua Jin has coached the team to victory for several years.

Fun Facts:

The paddlers included Laura Plata (‘28), a civil engineering major who competes on Colombia’s National Slalom Canoe team.

Steel Bridge

Results:

The team secured first place overall in the region and also took first place in the category of construction economy, second place in structural efficiency and cost estimation, and third place in stiffness.

Innovations:

The team used an incremental launching system of their own design, making them the only group in the competition to build their bridge without placing members in the 13-foot-wide virtual body of water they were spanning.

Coaches:

Mark Milkis and Chris Katsanos

Fun Facts:

Mark and Chris are both NYU alumni and former team leaders, from 2015 and 2018, respectively. Team members call their guidance “insanely helpful!