Golden, Colorado

Hey! My name is Ben, and I am a first year student in the SEM program currently pursuing a masters in structural engineering. I am from Golden, Colorado, and I graduated last year from the Colorado School of Mines with a B.S. in civil engineering and a minor in public affairs from the McBride Honors Program. I have always been drawn to structures and the built environment, specifically due to their place at the intersection of creative design and technical problem solving. Growing up, I remember being fascinated by our ability to make tall or unique structures stay standing, especially under the heavy winds I would often experience living on the Front Range or the earthquakes I would hear about in other places of the world.

While I have always been drawn to earthquake engineering and designing for severe loading, much of my decision to pursue graduate study at Stanford and my interest in research came from a semester I spent abroad. During my undergraduate degree, I spent a semester in a masters program at Aarhus University in Denmark, where I took courses on the design of tall structures and their ability to resist progressive collapse. This semester happened to coincide with the Turkey-Syria earthquakes in 2023; hearing about the resulting devastation while learning about designing for severe loading significantly grew my passion for this area structural engineering and ultimately led me to study here in the SEM program.

After starting in this program, I have become particularly interested in incorporating sustainability into this type of design. With the industry contributing so heavily to carbon emissions, our aging infrastructure, an increasing demand for structures, and the growing effects of a changing climate, the implementation of sustainable design is vital for the health of our societies. While I’m not sure what my contribution to this effort will look like yet, I look forward to being a part of the industry as we address this challenge.