Make room for another University of Florida 2025 National Championship. The Eckhoff Steel Bridge Team made history again last week, capturing its fifth consecutive national title.
The championship marks the UF team’s seventh first-place win since 1997, the most wins by a single team in the competition’s 33-year history. The team also scored second-place wins in 1995, 2005, 2008 and 2019, as well as placing third in 2003 and 2016.
Held at Iowa State University, the American Institute of Steel Construction’s (AISC) Student Bridge Competition ran May 30-31, challenging 43 college teams to build lightweight bridges with cost efficiency, design efficiency and speed.
“Our competition assembly time was the fastest in over 100 practice sessions, a remarkable achievement considering the hundreds of spectators who gathered to watch the University of Florida construct the bridge,” noted Taylor Rawlinson, Ph.D., the team’s faculty adviser and director of the Weil Hall Structures & Materials Laboratory.