Gary Sharpe earned his Bachelors (1976) and Masters (1978) Degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Kentucky. Gary was a Scholarship Student with the Transportation Cabinet between 1973 and 1975. Gary began his engineering career in 1976 with the Division of Research at the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. In 1980, the Division of Research was transferred to the University of Kentucky – Transportation Research Program which later became the Kentucky Transportation Center in 1986. In 1989, Gary returned to the Transportation Cabinet to lead the pavement design function in the Division of Highway Design. In 2000, Gary was named Director for the Division of Highway Design, a position held until his retirement in December 2004. Gary joined Palmer Engineering in 2005 as a Senior Project Manager.

During Gary’s career, he has been involved in many facets of pavement engineering including research and development, structural design of new and rehabilitated pavements, pavement management and condition assessment, and development of pavement design methodologies. Gary was an active participant early in his career in the development of the Kentucky 1982 Pavement Design Curves which were one of the first pavement design methodologies to be based on mechanistic-empirical principles. Later, while with the Transportation Cabinet, Gary chaired the AASHTO Joint Task Force on Pavements which was responsible for research and development leading to the AASHTO Pavement ME design methodology in use today. With his retirement from the Transportation Cabinet in 2004, Gary was asked by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program to chair the Panel responsible for implementing AASHTO’s new Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide that ultimately evolved to the AASHTO Pavement ME design method in use today.