A new era of collaboration

The asphalt pavement industry is entering a new era defined by collaboration and innovation. This week on Pave It Black, we welcome Jo Sias, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of New Hampshire, to explore how asphalt research is evolving to meet the demands of a changing world. With nearly 25 years of experience in pavement materials and infrastructure research, Jo shares how the field has grown beyond traditional engineering silos. Through collaboration social and data scientists, Jo explains why our industry must communicate with new voices to build infrastructure that performs better and lasts longer.

Jo also underscores the critical relationship between academic researchers and industry partners. She shares stories from The Road Forward Sabbatical Program and emphasizes how strong partnerships ensure that scientific advancements are not just theoretical, but practical. Tune in to hear how collaboration is reshaping asphalt engineering and creating new opportunities for students, researchers, and industry professionals alike.

Here’s a sneak peek into this week’s conversation but be sure to tune in to the full episode for all the insights. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts.

B: You talked about cross-collaboration and how you never pictured working with a social scientist. Are you seeing more of that in research or projects, and do you think technology will drive even more demand for bringing in specialists from different areas?

JS: That has been evolving more over the last decade. There is a growing recognition that we need to get away from siloing problem-solving because that isn’t going to work for some problems. There isn’t one person who has all the expertise needed.

To effectively think about solutions that are going to be long-term, you need different viewpoints. You need social scientists to tell us how to engage stakeholders and identify who they are. You need people who can handle big data. Civil engineers aren’t typically trained to handle big data, so you need folks who can do that, along with modeling, AI tools, and machine learning.

Then you get into the policy piece. We need to change policies, and engineers aren’t trained in that area. It goes two ways: we need policymakers to help us communicate, but we also need to understand what’s possible and what the paths forward are.

Season 10 of Pave It Black is sponsored by FleetWatcher by AlignOps.