The National Steel Bridge Competition, sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers and co-sponsored by the American Institute of Steel Construction, will take place on May 23-24 at San Diego State University. This is the fourth year in a row that CSUN's steel bridge team has made it to the nationals.

The team qualified for the San Diego contest after finishing first in construction speed and in construction economy and second overall at the regional competition held at Arizona State University last weekend.

The team constructed 24-foot-long, two-span steel bridge capable of supporting 2,500 pounds of load in just 3 minutes and 48 seconds.

"The goal of the steel bridge team now is to reduce the weight and to speed up the construction time so that we may be more competitive when we get to the nationals," said Stephen Gadomski, chair of CSUN's Department of Civil Engineering and Applied Mechanics.

CSUN is one of 17 universities that make up the Pacific Southwest Regional Student Conference of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Each year, teams from the universities compete to see which two will go on to represent the region at the National Steel Bridge Competition, where approximately 40 universities vie for the national title.

CSUN placed fifth in the national contest last year.

The contest requires the students to design and build a 24-foot-long, two-span steel bridge capable of supporting 2,500 pounds of load. The teams bring their creations to the competition in pieces, along with the tools to assemble them.

The teams are then judged in categories: how quickly they can assemble their bridges, the structure's aesthetics, construction economy, and the lightness, stiffness and structural efficiency of the bridges, with overall performance based on cumulative scores in all six categories.

CSUN's team members are John Taylor, Eladio Lopez, Jamie Munoz, Carlos Cueva (Bridge Captain), Rufino Lozano, and Quang Tran, with Kamyar Ghods, Gary Kobzeff, Arkadiy Preger and Anita Wu as alternates. Civil engineering professor Edward Larson serves as their advisor.

Cal State Northridge's College of Engineering and Computer Science is home to several nationally recognized programs where students gain valuable hands-on experience working alongside faculty members and industry professionals on cutting-edge research.

California State University, Northridge has more than 31,500 full- and part-time students and offers 59 bachelor's and 41 master's degrees as well as 28 education credential programs. Founded in 1958, it is the only four-year university in the San Fernando Valley and the fourth largest in the 23-campus CSU system. The Western Association of Schools and Colleges recently said CSUN "stands as a model to other public urban institutions of higher education."