Will Orben

Hi everyone!

I’m a first year graduate student in the SEM program here at Stanford. I grew up in the mountains of Colorado and graduated from CU Boulder with a B.S in Civil Engineering last spring. Having a rural background, I love all the classic Colorado activities like camping, snowboarding, and fly fishing. Over spring break I was able to camp at Pinnacles National Park with some friends which was a great first California camping experience!

My industry experience includes many summers with Harriman Construction working as a carpenter and safety officer, as well as 2 structural engineering internships with Kiewit. The internship with Kiewit focused mainly on bridge and permanent structure design which is what I hope to continue pursuing in my career.

I’m interested in CEE 120C/220C because I’m fascinated with optimization and have been looking to learn more about how to integrate it with design. There was a small introduction into optimization in the course CEE 280, and I think this class will allow me to dive deeper into it. I’ve also heard great things from previous students!

I only have a small amount of experience in Revit, and have never heard of Dynamo or Grasshopper. I think being able to gain some fluency in these software’s will help me in my career and further my understanding of the structural engineering field. In this course, I’d like to get creative with the assignments and stretch my imagination for the final project. It’s rare in the academic world of structural engineering to be able to express yourself in your work and have some freedom of what to design, so I’m very excited to do that this quarter.