NCAT Welcomes New Lead Engineer

Carolina RodeznoCarolina Rodezno’s special interest in asphalt pavements developed during her graduate studies in the U.S.  She had already completed her bachelor's degree in her native country of Nicaragua and received a scholarship from Arizona State University to pursue a master’s in transportation and materials engineering. She says she became interested in asphalt's "complexity as a structural material and the challenges to forecast its performance over time." She also recognized how important highway infrastructure performance is to the success of each country’s economy. 

For her Ph.D., Carolina focused on advance material characterization of pavement materials and pavement design. She completed her dissertation on the development of pavement performance criteria using advance laboratory testing. She graduated in 2010 and remained at ASU as a post-doctoral researcher, where she had the opportunity to help another country improve its highway infrastructure. Carolina traveled to Sao Paulo, Brazil, this summer to help prepare a framework for the city’s future implementation of the Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG).

Carolina’s education and real-world experience brought her to NCAT in September. She says NCAT’s worldwide leadership role in HMA research aligned with her own research interests, and she is excited to join the NCAT team.