APTech’s Applied Research and Deployment Program: where technical expertise meets real-world impact
APTech’s Applied Research & Deployment Program’s Prashant Ram, P.E.
April is Earth Month, so we are highlighting one of our newly created program areas—our Applied Research and Deployment Program. This area within APTech focuses on advancing sustainability and resilience knowledge and practices as they relate to pavement materials and design. APTech’s new Program Manager Prashant Ram, P.E., recently offered some insights about his department’s work, the clients they serve, and emerging trends he sees in the industry.
What does the Applied Research and Deployment Program do?
The Applied Research and Deployment program area focuses on advancing sustainable, resilient, and data-driven solutions for better-performing, longer-lasting infrastructure systems. Recent project examples include:
Assessing the impacts of wildfires and flooding on pavement systems.
Developing an environmental impact benchmarking tool (LCA Pave) to evaluate the life-cycle impacts of pavements.
Evaluating alternative cementitious materials for concrete pavement construction.
Exploring the expanded use of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) in preservation treatments.
What does this group deliver for our clients and employees?
For our clients (primarily state DOTs and federal agencies), we develop actionable tools, guidance, and research findings that help them improve asset performance, stretch limited budgets, reduce environmental footprint, and build resilience against emerging challenges like extreme weather events. Our work is designed to inform real decisions and improve outcomes.
For our employees, the Applied Research and Deployment group offers the opportunity to work on meaningful, forward-looking problems in the areas of materials, sustainability, and resilience—and see that work translated into practice. It's a program area where technical expertise meets real-world impact.
What are some of the biggest infrastructure challenges you are seeing agencies face today?
One of the most pressing challenges facing public infrastructure today is the growing strain of a changing climate. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more severe, and public agencies are being asked to manage aging infrastructure assets with tighter budgets. These are some of the challenges we are working to solve within our group.
We are actively engaged in research focused on understanding how extreme weather events affect pavement performance, and what agencies can do about it. Our goal is not just to document the problem, but to develop practical, deployable strategies that help agencies protect their investments, and make more informed decisions in an increasingly uncertain environment.
What trends are you seeing in the transportation industry these days?
The effects of climate change on pavement infrastructure have become an important topic for many highway agencies and relates to the resiliency of their systems. We are also seeing a growing adoption of tools like life-cycle assessment to quantify environmental impacts of pavement design and material choices. Agencies are working to develop design standards and specifications that account for future climate scenarios, rather than historical averages.
And to account for those future climate scenarios, there is a growing emphasis on reducing the carbon footprint of pavement materials. Agencies are exploring the use of supplementary and alternative cementitious materials as well as reclaimed asphalt pavement in asphalt mixtures.
Environmental product declarations (EPDs) are also a hot topic in the sustainability area. Industries are looking to develop and market their EPDs to get a competitive edge in the market.
Finally, we are also seeing a growing recognition that sustainable infrastructure decisions should account for community-level impacts.
How do you like to spend your time outside of work?
I enjoy biking, running, and playing cricket and pickleball.
This will be the first in a new series where we will feature our five new program areas at APTech. In each installment, leaders from each new department will discuss their work and their program’s place in the future of pavement engineering, research, training, and asset management.
Learn more about our Applied Research work.