Dr. Punya Rath is an Assistant Professor of Research in the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and the co-Director of the Mizzou Asphalt Pavement and Innovation Lab (MAPIL). Dr. Rath got his PhD from Mizzou in 2020 and his Master’s from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2017, both in Civil Engineering. His research is focused on enhancing sustainability and resilience on US road infrastructure, primarily through the incorporation of recycled materials, such as ground tire rubber and waste plastics, into asphalt pavement. He is nationally renowned for his expertise on dry process modification of asphalt mixtures and has helped several states in the US write specifications on incorporating recycled materials via dry process. He has recently authored two key reports on the use of Rubber Modified Asphalt in the US - the State of Knowledge on Rubber Modified Asphalt and the Summary of State Specifications for RMA. He is also one of the key researchers on the ongoing study about the release of microparticles and potential leachates from RMA mixtures.