Student Paper Competition

DFI and the DFI Educational Trust annually hold a Student Paper Competition, which is open to graduate and undergraduate students of engineering and construction. The criteria for entering this competition are as follows:

• Student must be enrolled in an accredited college or university in an undergraduate or graduate program.
• Focus of study must be engineering/construction/geological sciences.
• Paper must be based on student’s own work, and in her/his own writing.
• Paper must be primarily concerned with the design and construction of deep foundations/excavations.

All students 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 individual contest winner 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 will have access to a library of up to 20 DFI publications and a gratis two-year Individual Membership in DFI.

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