Paul Biju-Duval
University of Texas at Austin
Jury
Paul Endres
Lisa Iwamoto
Eric Long (Chair)
Mark Rossie
Fond of photography, literature, and fine arts in general, Paul Biju-Duval believes that structural engineering at its best is also an art and that the ideals of economy, efficiency, and elegance are similar to those considered in poetry. To a certain extent, structural engineers design with steel, concrete, glass, and other materials in the same way that poets express with words. The award will allow Biju-Duval to appreciate works of structural art worldwide and the aesthetics inherent to each structural material.
Paul Biju-Duval
University of Texas at Austin
Paul Biju-Duval
was born in Paris, France. He was exposed at an early age to wonderful structures such as the Eiffel Tower and the bridges over the Seine. At twenty, after reading Modern Architecture Since 1900 by William J. R. Curtis, Biju-Duval decided to dedicate himself to structural engineering as the scientific discipline closest to architecture. He earned a Master in Structural Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he discovered and patented a cementless structural material known as Cenocell. He also obtained a Master in Science and Executive Engineering from the École des Mines in Nancy, France.
After a year working as a construction engineer in Dubai and another two and a half years as design engineer on bridges and special structures projects in Paris and then Lima, Biju-Duval returned to the world of research. He developed a finite element program for curved steel bridges under the direction of Dr. Todd Helwig at the University of Texas at Austin, where he gained a PhD in Structural Engineering in December 2017. His program, UT Bridge, has been used by bridge engineers across the United States to quickly and accurately evaluate the stability and behavior of steel bridges during construction. In April 2018, Biju-Duval will start working as Engineering Consultant for LUSAS in London.