A new summer research program will give University of Wisconsin-Madison civil engineering undergraduates hands-on exposure to the future of roadway construction.
Zhenhua Zhu, an associate of civil and environmental engineering at UW-Madison, says the 10-week program will focus on digital twins in road construction. The program will begin in May 2026. The National Science Foundation is supporting it through its Research Experiences for Undergraduates program.
Digital twins are digital representations of a physical system or asset. They can represent everything from engines to factories. For example, if a digital twin is paired with a bridge, the first step is creating a digital model, then. Sensors on the bridge collect data that feeds into the model to predict when maintenance is needed.
Zhu says the program is designed to prepare undergraduate students for a field increasingly being shaped by digital infrastructure tools. Digital twin technology could, for example, help transportation agencies better predict deterioration and plan maintenance for aging roads and bridges.
“There are still a lot of questions we need to answer, like what data structures are appropriate for the digital twinning of road infrastructure,” he says. “How can we use digital twins of road infrastructure to create meaningful applications for the industry? Much of the road infrastructure across the United States is aging, so deterioration is a major issue. Do we use digital twins to facilitate or assist with asset management of our current infrastructure?”
UW-Madison is partnering with West Virginia University for the summer research program. Students will spend the first eight weeks of the program at their respective universities. Zhu says that in addition to lectures, the program will introduce students to industry professionals and speakers from transportation departments who can provide real-world insights into efforts to digitize road infrastructure.
Students will spend the program’s final two weeks in the United Kingdom at the University of Cambridge. There, Zhu says, they’ll get to collaborate with peers who are part of the European Commission-supported Future Roads Fellowship.
“One of the fundamental missions of the Future Roads project is the digital transformation of road infrastructure,” Zhu says. “So that’s going to be a great opportunity not only for our students to learn from them, but for them to learn from us—to exchange ideas about the current status and challenges of digital road infrastructure.”
The summer research program will run for three years. Though this year’s application window is closed, applications for the 2027 program should open in fall 2026.
Zhu is the Mortenson Company Associate Professor.