Baden Stickley came to Drexel with an acute curiosity of infrastructure and
its design. Initially drawn to engineering from his enjoyment of math,
Stickley began asking his aunt, an urban planner, questions about the
field, fostering Stickley’s interest in transportation systems and inspiring
him to pursue a career in civil engineering.
Wanting to get involved as early in his college career as possible,
Stickley joined Drexel's Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Program,
which allows students across all disciplines, from first-year undergrads to
PhD students, to participate in faculty-led research. Having gained
valuable insights into how a civil engineer conducts research and a desire
to explore research further, Stickley set his sights on the Students
Tackling Advanced Research (STAR) Scholars Program, giving him the
opportunity to complete 350 hours of research across the 10-week summer
term.
Under the guidance of Dr. Abieyuwa Aghayere, professor of Civil,
Architectural and Environmental Engineering, Stickley has spent the term
analyzing pier protection systems (PPS) on bridges over navigable waterways
to identify bridges in need of better protection.
PPS are designed to prevent ships from causing bridge collapses, such as
the March 2024 collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore,
Maryland, the result of container ship Dali striking one of the
bridge's piers, or legs. Stickley remarked that, while unlikely, bridge
collapses are very costly - not only did the Baltimore collapse claim six
lives and block the Port of Baltimore's shipping access for several weeks,
but it will take an estimated four years and $1.7-1.9 billion to replace
the bridge.
Information about the PPS of the country's bridges is crucial to preventing
such events, yet Stickley quickly found that "there is no single database
anywhere that lists how many bridges over navigable waterways there are [in
the U.S.], how many of them have [PPS], and what kinds of [PPS] they have."
And while consulting each state's individual inventory of bridges, Stickley
began recognizing a lack of due diligence to prevent bridge collapses
before they occur.
A prime example of this (while not situated over a waterway) is the Fern
Hollow Bridge, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, whose piers had severe
corrosion and holes that were identified in several inspections over the
course of several years. These issues were never flagged for immediate
attention from officials and ultimately went unaddressed, leading to the
bridge's collapse in January 2022.
"Government agencies have a lot to manage," Stickley said, citing the
hundreds of thousands of bridges, as well as roads, sidewalks, and other
structures, that state and federal transportation departments oversee.
"It's common for things that haven't caused any issues to be ignored."
Additionally, the engineers working for these agencies follow certain
procedures for designing and maintaining bridges that don't allow much, if
any, room for innovation, which has contributed to poor recordkeeping and a
lack of immediate action. The need for innovation, Stickley says, is where
research comes in.
Managing his own time on a long-term project, gaining valuable knowledge
from an expert in his field, and conversing with engineers across various
roles and organizations through STAR has aided Stickley’s discovery of
research as a complement to traditional engineering design. "Research
allows us to think about why we design things a certain way or how we could
change our design process for the better," Stickley stated.
STAR has also exposed Stickley to career paths he may not have considered
otherwise, such as structural forensics, which looks at the causes of
structural failures and methods of preventing them. Stickley believes the
potential for engineers to explore every opportunity available to them
makes it even more important for emphasis to be placed on research in
addition to industry careers.
"I would encourage any engineer to give research a try while they're in
college," Stickley stated. “You get to do something other people might not
know anything about, and you might just find that it's the right path for
you."