Students in Auburn’s ACI chapter place second overall in competition at convention
Published: Dec 9, 2025 1:00 PM
By Rachel Wingard
Auburn Engineering students Andrew Laird, Karson Helms and Jack Patty earned Auburn’s first podium finish in an international American Concrete Institute (ACI) competition at the organization’s annual convention this past October in Baltimore.
The students competed in the Egg Protection Device Competition against 38 teams from the U.S. and abroad, including groups from Indonesia, Costa Rica and Egypt. Auburn’s team placed second overall and first out of all U.S. teams.
Anton Schindler, Mountain Spirit Professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Highway Research Center, said the team’s podium finish is a significant achievement.
“This ACI competition is challenging, and the level of competition is fierce between teams from all over the world,” he said. “I’m proud of the Auburn team because this is the best we have ever placed in any international ACI competition.”
The ACI is a global nonprofit technical society and standards-developing organization focused on concrete design, construction and materials.
Teams began with an initial design provided by the ACI that specified allowed materials and dimensions. From there, Auburn’s team designed and tested multiple iterations. Laird, a junior in civil engineering and the team captain, said they spent more than a month getting to their final design.
“We developed our final dimensions over the course of about a month and a half,” he said. “We collaborated with the Makerspace in the Brown-Kopel Center to 3D print and test different dimensions.”
Laird said it was rewarding to see their hard work pay off in the competition.
“My teammates and I were all incredibly excited with our performance,” he said. “We spent a lot of late nights working hard on our final product, so seeing our work pay off was incredibly rewarding.”
Segun Osibodu, president of Auburn’s ACI chapter, helped guide the team through the design process.
“When the team decided to use ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC), I stepped in to provide technical mentorship,” he said. “UHPC is an emerging concrete technology that requires specialized knowledge beyond conventional concrete, and since it's the focus of my doctoral research, I worked directly with the team on the technical aspects.”
Osibodu said that in helping the team understand their materials and troubleshoot challenges, he learned how to take knowledge from his research and turn it into practical instructions.
“My role was essentially translating my research expertise into practical guidance the team could apply to the competition project,” he said. “Helping them make that connection between theory and practice is a satisfying aspect of my involvement with ACI.”
With their strong finish in this competition, Laird said the team is already looking ahead.
“We are all returning for the competition in the spring,” he said. “With the new knowledge we've gained from this past competition, we are setting our sights high and hoping to perform even better.”
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Auburn Engineering students from the American Concrete Institute (ACI) chapter celebrate their second-place finish in the Egg Protection Device Competition at the ACI Concrete Convention in Baltimore.
