AASHTO Journal - Cynthia Smith Named AASHTO RAC Vice Chair

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials has named Cynthia Smith, state research engineer with the Mississippi Department of Transportation, to a two-year term as vice chair of the AASHTO Research Advisory Committee or RAC.

[Above photo by Mississippi DOT]

The RAC is a subset of the AASHTO Special Committee on Research and Innovation, which Smith has served on since 2020. That committee supports AASHTO and the transportation community by delivering strategic, high-quality research results while addressing development, technology transfer, and implementation. The RAC, in turn, supports the activities of the committee by promoting quality and excellence in research with the ultimate goal of improving state transportation systems.

Smith – who earned a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Louisiana Tech University in 1995 – has been with Mississippi DOT since 1996, starting out in the agency’s Planning Division then transferring to its research arm in 1998.

She worked her way from Mississippi DOT’s “Engineer-in-Training” program through the agency’s engineer series in pavement management before becoming assistant state research engineer in 2009. She has held her current position as state research engineer since 2017.

Smith has been involved with AASHTO RAC since 2009, having chaired Region 2 and co-chaired its “Value of Research” task force, and is currently active on its “Administration” task force.

In 2019, AASHTO named her to its Committee on Knowledge Management, where she serves on the Research and Membership Subcommittees. Smith also serves as the Transportation Research Board’s state representative for Mississippi, and is heavily involved in the TRB Standing Committee on Research Innovation Implementation Management, where she serves on the leadership team. She also serves on the National Cooperative Highway Research Program or NCHRP synthesis panel (20-05) and the implementation panel (20-44).