AWE Debuts at 2025 ACWE — Inaugural AWE Best Student Paper Award Revealed!

 

At the recently concluded 15th Americas Conference on Wind Engineering (2025 ACWE), the inaugural AWE Best Student Paper Award was successfully held. This marks the first time AWE has established such an award for students at an international conference, an initiative aimed at inspiring and celebrating excellence among students in the field of wind engineering.

Following a rigorous initial full-text review and an on-site defense, three outstanding students were selected from a competitive field. Their research stood out for its innovation, practical significance, and academic merit, spanning multiple cutting-edge areas of wind engineering and demonstrating remarkable potential of the next generation of researchers.

Award winner list

• Kimia Yousefi Anarak

        Colorado State University

        Title: Validating Debris Flight Model in Highly Turbulent Boundary Layer Flows Using Wind Tunnel Testing

• Tsigereda Getachew Eshete

        WindEEE Research Institute, Western University

        Title: Wind Loads on Solar Trackers Using Wind Tunnel and CFD

• Mahmoud Elnahla

        Colorado State University

        Title: Statistical Characterization of Extreme Wind Duration Using Surface Observations in the U.S.

AWE advisory editorial board members, Prof. Yukio Tamura, former President of the International Association for Wind Engineering, and Prof. Yaojun Ge, former President of the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering (IABSE), presented the winners with certificates of honor. Both professors encouraged the winners to regard this recognition not as a culmination, but as a new beginning, and to continue striving for excellence in their academic and scientific pursuits.

We would like to express our heartfelt appreciation to the following nine experts for their dedication to ensuring the professionalism and fairness of this evaluation.

List of experts (sorted alphabetically):

• Claudio Borri, University of Florence
• Fei Ding, Rice University
• Haifeng Wang, Washington State University
• Jin Wang, Western University
• Miguel Cid Montoya, Clemson University
• Reda Snaiki, École de technologie supérieure
• Yaojun Ge, Tongji University
• Yukio Tamura, Chongqing University/Tokyo Polytechnic University
• Teng Wu, University at Buffalo

Looking ahead, AWE will continue to refine the evaluation process, establishing a diverse range of awards and identifying more outstanding talents.