Young Professor Paper Competition

DFI and the DFI Educational Trust hold an Annual Young Professor Paper Competition to help bridge the gap between practice and study. The criteria for entering this competition are as follows:

• Paper must be primarily concerned with the design and construction of deep foundations/excavations.
• The candidate professor should be a full-time entry-level member of the faculty of an accredited college or university, engaged in teaching and/or research in any of the professional fields including engineering/construction/geological sciences.
• Paper must be based on the professor’s own work, and may include contributions from the professor’s research student(s) as secondary author(s).

All professors with abstracts submitted will be included in the paper competition, unless the subject matter is deemed inappropriate. Papers will be judged based on their submitted drafts. Comments will be offered to the winning paper author for preparation of the final version.

The primary author of the winning paper will be invited to attend the DFI Annual Conference on Deep Foundations to present her/his paper. Conference registration, two nights of lodging and a $1,000 stipend for travel expenses will be provided to the winner. Both the winner and runners-up are invited to submit their papers for publication in the DFI Journal and receive a library of up to 20 DFI publications and a gratis two-year DFI Individual Membership.

The 2024 Call for Abstracts is closed. The 2025 Call for Abstracts will open in October 2024.