Duke Engineers Without Borders Co-Founder Has Career in Concrete Design

June 1, 2007







As an undergrad, Deirdre McShane (second from left) traveled to Indonesia with the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) chapter she co-founded. Now, she works as a structural engineer at Thornton Tomasetti and is a professional member of New York City's EWB chapter. Photo credit: Matthew Edmundson

Just two years after graduation, CEE alumna Deirdre McShane spends her days designing concrete and steel elements for major academic and commercial buildings around the country as a structural engineer for Thornton Tomasetti in New York City. The major engineering firm is perhaps best known for its work on the world's two tallest buildings, Taipei 101 in Taiwan and the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia, as well as the new Yankee Stadium, she said.

Launching her engineering career on a "straightforward warehouse," the central Florida native has since worked on the design of the Connecticut Center for Science & Exploration, a complex now under construction that shares an architect with the record-breaking Petronas Towers. She also helped design the gravity system, including the concrete beams, slabs, columns and foundation, for a physical sciences building at Cornell University.

"I'm applying everything that I learned at Duke," McShane said. "The work is very concrete no pun intended and incredibly satisfying. It's really cool to see something that you spent days designing actually get built."

In her free time, McShane teaches high school students about engineering through an organization founded by Charles Thornton of Thornton Tomasetti called Architecture Construction and Engineering (ACE) and meets with other professional engineers as a member of the city's Engineers Without Borders (EWB) chapter, which is now focused on rebuilding a washed out dam system in Cambodia.

A Pratt School Experience

McShane first got involved with EWB as one of two founders of Duke's student chapter, which sent her and others to Indonesia to help restore shrimp hatcheries devastated after the Christmas tsunami of 2004 and assist villagers in Indonesian West Papua in efforts to protect their village from erosion caused by a nearby river (Learn about the experience in McShane's own words here.)

Rather than return with the rest of the group, McShane, who graduated from Duke in May 2005, spent another six months on her own, sightseeing and volunteering in nine Southeast Asian countries, including Thailand, Vietnam and Burma. It was during that trip in Malaysia, where she had a chance to visit the Petronas Towers, that McShane first set her sights on Thornton Tomasetti.

"While on a tour of the towers, I looked up the structural engineering firm responsible for the design," McShane said. "I jotted 'Thornton Tomasetti' on a scrap of paper and, months later, I sent them my resume upon returning to the U.S."

She said other notable experiences at Duke include her involvement in Techtronics, an after-school academic enrichment program for middle school students, and her participation in the American Society of Civil Engineers Carolinas Conferences, The Society of Women Engineers and club lacrosse. She also had opportunities to study abroad in both Australia and Costa Rica and to conduct independent study research on vibration isolation in Professor Lawrence Virgin's laboratory. She published her research findings in Vertices, a journal highlighting Duke undergraduates' scientific writing.

McShane's advice to current and future students of Duke and the Pratt School: Although you will often feel like you don't have time to take advantage of all those extracurricular activities "you've got to make time for them. Duke is so much more than classes. You should try everything at least once."

 

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Deborah Hill, Director of Communications, 415 Teer Engineering Building, 919-660-8403, dahill@duke.edu