Mississippi State sweeps top honors at ASCE Mississippi Section meeting

Contact: Chris Whitaker

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State alumnus Jesse Doyle was named Engineer of the Year at the 2026 American Society of Civil Engineers Mississippi Section meeting held Sept. 9-11 at ERDCWERX in Vicksburg.

MSU earned a clean sweep as Ziai Li was awarded Young Engineer of the Year, and junior Kennedy Harper received the Civil Engineering Student of the Year award.

The Mississippi Section is made up of the Jackson, Vicksburg, Gulf Coast and North Mississippi branches, as well as student chapters at MSU, Ole Miss and Jackson State. The board of directors selected the winners.

Doyle is a research civil engineer at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg. He also serves as an adjunct faculty member in the Richard A. Rula School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s in 2007 and 2009, respectively, and his doctorate in civil engineering in 2011, all from MSU.

Doyle serves as a principal investigator for multiple projects, primarily dealing with pavement materials. He has also authored more than 50 technical publications.

Li is a hydrology and hydraulics project engineer at Garver in Ridgeland. His project experience includes roadway and urban drainage design, floodplain and bridge hydraulic modeling, pipe and culvert sizing and scour analysis. Li graduated from MSU in 2023 with a bachelor’s in civil engineering.

Harper, a Bagley Ambassador, is also the president of MSU’s ASCE student chapter. She presented the chapter’s achievements to the section’s board of directors at the meeting.

“Kennedy is currently leading the largest MSU ASCE student chapter that I have ever been a part of,” said Thomas Lynn, associate clinical professor. “I am looking forward to what Kennedy will accomplish as a future alum.”

Tyler Hartman received the President’s Award for serving as the section’s president for the 2025-26 year. He earned a bachelor’s in civil engineering from MSU in 2022 and is working on his master’s in structural engineering with a focus on bridge design and analysis at Auburn University. Hartman is a project engineer at Garver. Hartman is the latest in a line of MSU alumni to lead the section, following Mariette Wientjes (2024) and Will Carruth (2025).

Jackson Dew, a roadway hydraulics engineer at the Mississippi Department of Transportation, was named the section’s president for the 2026-27 year. He received a bachelor’s in civil engineering from MSU in 2024.

“One milestone I encourage civil engineering students to pursue is to become a licensed professional engineer,” Lynn said. “All the MSU alum mentioned here have already passed the PE exam or are licensed professional engineers and are employed in the State of Mississippi. I am truly proud of what they have accomplished.”

The Richard A. Rula School of Civil and Environmental Engineering is online at www.cee.msstate.edu and can be found on Facebook and X.

The Bagley College of Engineering is online at www.bagley.msstate.edu and can be found on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X and YouTube at @msuengineering.

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