SOM Foundation Announces Jury for the 2023 Structural Engineering Fellowship

Sigrid Adriaenssens’s research interests lie in the mechanics of large‐span shells and membranes under extreme loading and more recently under construction. She has been working on a comprehensive framework with advanced analytical formulations, numerical form finding and optimization approaches, fluid/structure interaction models, and algorithms to open new avenues for accelerated discoveries and automated optimal designs. In terms of applications, she has used this framework to successfully innovate structural and architectural systems ranging from macroscale adaptive shading shell devices to large‐scale storm surge membrane barriers. In 2021, she was named a fellow of the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), elected vice president of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS), and received the DigitalFUTURES Matthias Rippmann Memorial Prize (Tongji University) and the Pioneers’ Award (Spatial Structures Research Centre of the University of Surrey). In 2018, she received the ASCE George Winter Award. She chairs the ASCE Aesthetics in Design Committee as well as the IASS Concrete Shell Roofs Working Group. She is the coeditor of the International Journal of Space Structures and directs the Form Finding Lab at Princeton University, where she teaches courses on (non)linear mechanics of solids and slender structures, structural design, and the integration of engineering and the arts.

Alessandro Beghini (Chair) is a senior associate principal at SOM. His portfolio encompasses a wide range of award-winning projects, ranging from some of the world’s tallest buildings to sculptures and specialty structures. Beghini has established an expertise in delivering structural solutions that are efficient and elegant, working alongside the architectural and construction teams. He was part of the team leading the structural design for the Tianjin CTF Finance Center in China. The supertall structure stands at an outstanding height of 530 meters. Other significant collaborations include his work with Atelier Peter Zumthor for the structural design of the LACMA Museum in Los Angeles and numerous collaborations with world-renowned artist Janet Echelman. His collaborations with the artist include the Dream Catcher sculpture in West Hollywood and Earthtime Korea, among several other temporary installations.

Janet Echelman sculpts at the scale of buildings and city blocks. Echelman’s work defies categorization, as it intersects sculpture, architecture, urban design, material science, structural and aeronautical engineering, and computer science. Echelman’s art transforms with wind and light, and shifts from being “an object you look at, into an experience you can get lost in.” Using unlikely materials from atomized water particles to engineered fiber fifteen times stronger than steel, Echelman combines ancient craft with computational design software to create artworks that have become focal points for urban life on five continents, from Singapore, Sydney, Shanghai, and Santiago, to Beijing, Boston, New York, and London.

Carlos Gonzalez provides executive leadership for Clark Construction Group’s Southern California Region. He is responsible for the region’s day-to-day operations, business development, and preconstruction from project inception, contract negotiations, and monitoring construction progress. Throughout his tenure at Clark, Gonzalez has served in project management, field supervision, and overall leadership roles throughout Southern California, for clients including the San Diego Padres, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Delta Airlines, Los Angeles World Airports, Walt Disney Imagineering, State of California, JMI Realty, Host Hotels & Resorts, Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command (NAVFAC), General Services Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, University of California, and the California State University. Gonzalez serves on the board of directors of the National ACE Mentor Program and Hope Builders. He also serves as a member of the Civil Engineering Advisory Board at San Diego State University.

Jenny Sabin is an architectural designer whose work is at the forefront of a new direction for twenty-first century architectural practice—one that investigates the intersections of architecture and science and applies insights and theories from biology and mathematics to the design of responsive material structures and ecological spatial interventions for diverse audiences. Sabin is the Arthur L. and Isabel B. Wiesenberger Professor in Architecture and Associate Dean for Design at Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP), where she established a new advanced research degree in Matter Design Computation. She is principal of Jenny Sabin Studio, an experimental architectural design studio based in Ithaca and director of the Sabin Lab at Cornell AAP. In 2006, she cofounded the Sabin+Jones LabStudio, a hybrid research and design unit, together with biologist Peter Lloyd Jones. Sabin holds degrees in ceramics and interdisciplinary visual art from the University of Washington and a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. She was a Pew Fellow in 2010 and was named a USA Knight Fellow in 2011. In 2014, she was awarded the prestigious Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers and Architectural Record’s national Women in Architecture Awards selected her for the 2016 Innovator award. She has exhibited nationally and internationally including in the acclaimed ninth ArchiLab Naturalizing Architecture exhibition at the Frac Centre, Orleans, France and most recently as part of Beauty, the fifth Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial. Her book LabStudio: Design Research Between Architecture and Biology, coauthored with Peter Lloyd Jones, was published in July 2017. In 2017, Sabin won MoMA and MoMA PS1’s Young Architects Program with her submission, Lumen.