Annie Helmes (she/her)

Hi everyone! My name is Annie Helmes. I am currently a first year masters student in the Structural Engineering and Mechanics program at Stanford. I graduated from the University of Wisconsin - Madison last spring studying Civil and Environmental Engineering.

I grew up about an hour north of New York City where my favorite activities were swimming, hiking, and hunting down the best ice cream in town. My happy place would most certainly be my pool (seen below 😊)

For the past three summers, I interned at LERA Consulting Structural Engineers in Manhattan where I worked as an engineering intern on their forensics team. Studying structural failures and being able to add valuable information to feasibility studies and litigation reports really led me to be interested in the forensic aspects of structural engineering. This upcoming summer I will be sticking around the Bay Area working as a structural engineering intern at Martin/Martin in their Bay Area office. I am excited to work on a more traditional structural design team and thrilled to be alongside such bright individuals.

In terms of my personal life, I love to be able to be creative in just about anyway I can. I love to draw, paint, and go to concerts. I also like to hike, run and climb! This upcoming summer, as I will be working in Marin, I am extremely excited to explore more of the hiking spots and beaches of Northern California. I even want to try and outdoor climb!

I am interested in this course for several reasons, but most notably to be able to have an outlet to channel my creativity and how that can relate to structural design. In terms of learning goals, I hope to gain a sense of comfort in using new programs like Rhino and Dynamo. I took a course on REVIT in my undergrad and absolutely loved it, so I am looking forward to expanding my knowledge in the program. In one of my past internships at LERA, I designed this dome/archway structure that was a preliminary design for a lunar rover garage for NASA. Looking ahead at the assignments, I am really excited to be able to create a similar dome structure in assignment 3 and even be able to better grasp the nature of the structure versus when I first was assigned the task in the professional environment. I am really excited for this course!