M. Emin Kutay has been named chair of Michigan Tech’s Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering (CEGE), effective July 20.
Kutay comes to the College of Engineering from Michigan State University, where he was a professor of civil and environmental engineering for 18 years. There, he built an internationally recognized program in pavement engineering, infrastructure materials, and computational modelling.
He earned his undergraduate degree in civil engineering from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey, before earning his M.S. and Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park. Prior to joining Michigan State, Kutay worked for the Federal Highway Administration’s Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center, where he served in several roles as part of the Pavement Design and Performance Modeling Team.
An award-winning researcher in transportation infrastructure analysis and management, Kutay’s interests include asphalt mixture characterization (both experimental and modeling), mechanistic-empirical pavement analysis and design, pavement preservation, and geotechnical engineering. More recently, his research has extended to modeling the effects of flooding on pavement performance and to large-scale highway systems analysis.
He has received the American Society of Civil Engineering’s (ASCE) Collingwood Prize, the ASCE Arthur M. Wellington Prize, and the Association of Asphalt Paving Technologists’ Walter J. Emmons Award for best paper. As a graduate researcher, he held the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Dwight David Eisenhower Graduate Research Fellowship from 2003 to 2005 and earned the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials’ National Competition Award for transportation professionalism.
“Professor Kutay steps into this vital leadership role backed by an impressive research portfolio, federal and academic leadership experience, and a deep commitment to engineering education and our community’s growth,” said Michelle Scherer, dean of the College of Engineering. “He has a deep understanding of how top-tier R1 research universities operate, paired with direct experience navigating the unique funding, research, and industry landscape of the State of Michigan.”
Kutay teaches courses in numerical methods, soil mechanics, and pavement engineering, and has developed hands-on, computation-based instructional materials that connect classroom fundamentals to real engineering practice. As CEGE department chair, Kutay will further the department’s mission to provide an educational, professional, and intellectual experience to improve societal well-being for its more than 500 undergraduate students and 100 graduate students, as well the department’s alumni, faculty, and staff.
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