Introduction:

Hi everyone! My name is Alanna Joachim and I am a first year Master’s student in the Structural Engineering program here at Stanford. I am planning to finish my degree at the end of Winter quarter in 2023! I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering with a minor in Engineering Management from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and I am from Massachusetts (located about 45 minutes north of Boston). Some of my favorite activities include skiing, hiking, photography, and generally being outdoors.

Below is a picture from Alaska, where I spent one month doing research (completely unrelated to structures!) during my senior year of undergrad.

Industry Experience

The software I would consider myself to have the most knowledge of is SAP2000 and ETABS both made by CSI. However, I have also had a decent amount of experience using REVIT and AutoCAD from prior internships. Last summer I mainly used REVIT to edit drawing sets for my structural engineering internship with SGH, and I worked for a summer as a drafting intern for a site civil company using AutoCAD. I have also taken a Introduction to BIM class in my undergrad which was more geared towards architecture and construction, but where I learned to use Sketchup and REVIT. I am working this summer as a structural engineering intern for ARUP and I look forward to building more skills that will help me in that internship.

Goals and Interest in the Course

My main goal for the course is to learn how to use new software proficiently and continue to grow my knowledge about optimization. I am mainly interested in the course in order to improve my current abilities and also to learn completely new skills. In my CEE280 class (Advanced Structural Analysis) we had a unit on optimization which was interesting to me but only touched the surface of this complex topic. I also completed research during my undergraduate career which involved some 3D modeling and touched on the topic of parametric design, so I am interested to learn more!