The Metal Building Manufacturers Association (MBMA) presented Dr. Roger A. LaBoube with the 2025 Dr. Duane S. Ellifritt Research Award. Named after MBMA’s original director of research and engineering, this honor is given annually to a researcher whose contributions led to advancements within the metal building systems industry. Dr. LaBoube accepted the award at the 2025 MBMA Research Symposium in New Orleans, Louisiana. 

“Congratulations to Dr. LaBoube, a well-known researcher and expert in cold-formed steel,” said Lee Shoemaker, Ph.D., PE, MBMA’s current director of research and engineering.  He has made huge contributions to the metal building industry, not just in his outstanding research efforts, but in being the focal point for teaching cold-formed steel design in the United States.  In accepting the award, Dr. LaBoube shared that Dr. Ellifritt was one of his mentors, and that made the award very special.” 

Dr. LaBoube is Curators Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus, Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Missouri, formerly the University of Missouri–Rolla. He is a former director of the Wei-Wen Yu Center for Cold-Formed Steel Structures (CCFSS) at the University of Missouri-Rolla, which he co-founded with Dr. Wei-Wen Yu. The CCFSS hosted the International Specialty Conference on Cold-Formed Steel, led by Drs. Yu and LaBoube, which brought together leading scientists, researchers, educators, and engineers engaged in the research and design of cold-formed steel structures.

Dr. LaBoube holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla. He began his metal building career in the research department of Butler Manufacturing, where he was introduced to metal buildings. He then carried his knowledge and research about metal buildings, and in particular cold-formed steel, to academia as he returned to his alma mater. He has an extensive background in the design and behavior of cold-formed steel structures and has taught thousands of engineers who are not typically exposed to cold-formed steel design in the undergraduate engineering curriculum.

Dr. LaBoube was the principal investigator on many research projects sponsored by MBMA that led to improvements to the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) S100 cold-formed specification. Additionally, he has been active in professional organizations and societies, including membership on the AISI Committee on Specifications and as chairman of AISI’s Committee on Framing Standards. He is a registered Professional Engineer in Missouri.

The MBMA research award is named for Dr. Ellifritt, who was teaching at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma, in 1975 when he was appointed as the first director of research and engineering for the MBMA. He served in that role until 1985 when he returned to teaching as a professor of civil engineering at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he taught until his retirement in 2010. Throughout his life, artistic expression was evidenced through his prolific works in various mediums. He always traveled with his sketch book and would transform his favorite drawings into intricate watercolors. His home and art studio were wall-to-wall with original vignettes of his observations of life, especially his interest in bridges and other structures. His most famous work, the Steel Structure, is a teaching sculpture that stands on the Gainesville campus and has been reproduced nearly 200 times at colleges and universities around the world. He passed away in 2018.The Ellifritt family was honored that MBMA has chosen to memorialize his achievements in this way.