NYU Tandon’s Concrete Canoe and Steel Bridge Teams Sweep Regionals and Set Their Sights on Nationals

Each year, the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) challenge student teams across the country to conceive, design, fabricate, erect, and test a steel bridge that meets competition specifications while optimizing performance, economy, and aesthetics. In a separate ASCE competition, students are tasked with designing, building, and racing a canoe that floats — despite being made of concrete, a material most people assume would sink the moment it touches water.

At NYU Tandon, both challenges have become annual proving grounds for the next generation of engineers — and this year, both teams are once again heading to the national finals after dominant performances at their regional conferences.

The scope of their achievement is hard to overstate. The Concrete Canoe team swept every single category at the 2026 Metropolitan Regional Conference (including the race events), a first in school history. The Steel Bridge team, meanwhile, took first place overall and earned podium finishes in every scored category with a 23-foot structure that pushed the limits of what the team has ever attempted.

Both teams operate under the umbrella of NYU Tandon’s Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program, which gives students from across disciplines — civil, mechanical, computer science, chemical engineering, and more — a sustained home for collaborative, long-horizon engineering work.

Concrete Canoe

Results

The team swept all categories at the 2026 Metropolitan Regional Conference — first place in Final Product, Technical Presentation, Technical Project Proposal, and, for the first time in school history, in all the race events as well.

Innovations

Building on last year’s carbon-negative design, the 2026 team pushed their sustainability commitments even further. Where the 2025 canoe relied on CO₂-sequestered steel slag, this year’s team replaced the slag entirely with recycled concrete fines — a waste byproduct of the concrete industry itself — keeping those materials out of landfills and closing the loop on the aggregate supply chain.

The team’s Special Projects subteam also built on the wearable sensor work from last year, developing an app that analyzes paddling strokes in real time and provides feedback on form — a tool that helped the paddlers prepare for the race events they ultimately swept.

Leadership

Co-project managers Janice Chen and Vivian Zou led a team whose depth and cohesion showed in every category scored.

“I’ve been blessed with the most amazing teammates this year — none of this would have been possible without their hard work,” Chen says. “And we would never have made it this far without Vivian. This year has been filled with adventures and challenges, and I’m proud that we managed to create something bigger than us.”

Advisor

Industry Professor Weihua Jin has coached the Concrete Canoe team to victory for several consecutive years, and this season’s sweep adds another milestone to a remarkable run.

“Each year, I think the team couldn’t possibly surpass the previous year’s performance, and I’m delighted that I have been proven wrong several times,” he says. “It’s no exaggeration to say that the 2026 regionals will go down in Tandon history. I am incredibly proud of our students, who have devoted countless late nights to gaining real-world experience that will help shape the future of civil engineering through innovations like carbon-negative concrete, modular construction, and an AI-powered paddling trainer.”

Fun Fact

Among this year’s team members is Laura Plata, a World Championship-caliber slalom canoe racer, who is looking forward to paddling in the Nationals.

Steel Bridge

Results

The Steel Bridge team took first place overall at regionals, with podium finishes in every scored category — a dominant showing that sends them on to the national finals.

Innovations

At 23 feet, this year’s bridge is among the longest the team has ever built, raising the stakes for every stage of the process — from structural design and fabrication tolerances to the choreography of timed assembly.

Leadership

Vincent Lin served as the team’s project manager (the title used in place of “captain” in keeping with civil engineering convention.)

Advisor

Mark Milkis, an NYU alumnus and former Steel Bridge team leader himself, continues to guide the team. Students have long credited his mentorship as central to their success.

"Competing in the Steel Bridge Competition shaped who I am as an engineer — it taught me how to think under pressure, collaborate, and build something real with my hands,” Milkis, who graduated with his master’s degree in 2016 and is now a senior structural engineer at Parsons Corporation, says. “Getting to come back now as a mentor feels like closing a loop. I see these students pushing through the same challenges I did, and I know exactly how much it's going to mean to them a decade from now."

Fun Fact

Team members are assigned to be “Barges,” who start and must stay in the river during timed construction, and “Builders,” who start on land and stay out of the river. There are violations if either steps out of their respective starting zones.

This year, the competition featured a "Riverbank" separating the groups and serving as a restricted zone for both. This presented a serious challenge, since construction costs were governing constraints – a situation the team mitigated by making the Builder a "transporter" role, and the Barges the main builders of the bridge instead.

On to Nationals

The 2026 Student Steel Bridge Competition National Finals will take place in late May at the University of Texas at El Paso, bringing together the winners of 19 regional competitions from across North America to compete for the top spot. The Concrete Canoe nationals are slated for late June, at Fairmont State University in West Virginia.

Maurizio Porfiri, interim chair of NYU Tandon’s Department of Civil, Urban, and Environmental Engineering, is rooting enthusiastically for both teams.

“Competitions like these are where classroom learning becomes engineering judgment. Our students aren't just solving problems on paper — they're welding, troubleshooting, and defending their designs in front of professionals. That's exactly the kind of hands-on experience that defines a Tandon education,” he says.

Associate Department Chair Semiha Ergan concurs. "Both the Steel Bridge and Concrete Canoe provide immense experiential learning opportunities for our students ” she says. “I know through these projects, students have put in long nights in the lab and the shop, and the camaraderie they've built is just as impressive as their engineering. Whatever the results, they're representing Tandon with grit and ingenuity, and that’s a real win."