2022 STEM Hero Honorees

Margarita Ordaz is a research civil engineer with the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s Geotechnical and Structures Laboratory.  Since joining the ERDC in February 2020, she’s become a vital member of a group developing innovative techniques for characterizing the relationship between soils and pavements during the construction of roads and airfields for transporting military personnel and supplies.

In her first major assignment as the co-principal investigator of the Roadway Roughness assessment project, Ms. Ordaz led research and development projects that provided the U.S. Army with its own roughness index representative of military vehicles. Working through the challenges presented by COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, she deployed a combination of embedded accelerometers, LiDAR scans, traditional pavement assessment tools, and advancements in near surface characterization equipment technology and generated a model customized for the U.S. Army. This work has improved decision making by providing personnel on the ground with ready information about a road’s pavement condition and its ability to withstand heavy traffic volume.

In her current role, Ms. Ordaz is the lead principal investigator of three projects and the co-principal investigator of one project. Her research efforts earned her the prestigious designation of Subject Matter Expert in Near Surface Soil Characterization for Airfields and Low-Volume Roads, no small achievement for an engineer in her third year as a professional.

Ms. Ordaz graduated with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas at El Paso in 2019. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in civil engineering from Mississippi State University with a focus in near surface soil characterization for Low-Volume Road applications.