[09/05/02]The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced Wednesday that the Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg has won the 2002 Army Large Research and Development Organization of the Year award.

Claude M. Bolton, assistant secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology will present the award Dec. 2 at the Army Science Conference in Orlando, Fla.

“It’s an honor,” said Dr. James Houston, director of ERDC, created here in 1928 as Waterways Experiment Station.

The award recognizes the top research and development centers for the Army. ERDC competed against about 20 other centers in the nation for the award.

“It’s a testimony to the work of our researchers and the work we do for the Army,” Houston said.

ERDC was commended for its outstanding research efforts, hard work and support to the Sept. 11 recovery, research products that saved lives at the Pentagon and supporting the war on terrorism through support to Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

Some of the work cited in the award includes models for anti-terrorism developed last year shortly before the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. That research had been used in some of the reconstruction at the Pentagon before Sept. 11 and may have helped save lives when terrorists drove a plane into the building, Houston said.

“We came up with technology to withstand a terrorist’s blast,” he said.

ERDC receives about 6 percent of the Army’s science and technology funding, about $550 million, and employs about 2,000 people at four sites across the nation. About 1,200 engineers at the facilities conduct research in both military and civil works areas for the Department of Defense and the nation.