The paper entitled “Importance of Proof-Load Tests in Foundation Reliability” by Shadi Najjar and Robert Gilbert, won the best paper award for an author 35 years and younger at the IFCEE’09 conference held in Orlando, Florida. The paper was presented on March 18, 2009 at the International Foundation Congress & Equipment Exposition (IFCEE’09), which is the major annual conference that is organized by the Geo-Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers, ASCE. The paper was also published as part of Geotechnical Special Publication No. 186 by ASCE entitled “Contemporary Topics in In-Situ Testing , Analysis, and Reliability of Foundations”.