When two airplanes hit the World Trade Center in New York City on 11 September 2001, no one could predict how the Twin Towers would react structurally. The commercial jet airliners severed columns and started fires, weakening steel beams, and causing a “pancaking,” progressive collapse.
Skyscrapers had not been designed or constructed with that kind of catastrophic structural failure in mind. IEEE Senior Member Sena Kizildemir is changing that through disaster simulation, one scenario at a time.
Sena Kizildemir Employer Thornton Tomasetti, in New York City Job title Project engineer Member grade Senior member Alma maters Işik University in Şile and Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, Pa.
A project engineer at Thornton Tomasetti’s applied science division in New York, Kizildemir uses simulations to study how buildings fail under extreme events such as impacts and explosions. The simulation results can help designers develop mitigation strategies.
“Simulations help us understand what could happen before it occurs in real life,” she says, “to be able to better plan for it.”
She loves that her work mixes creativity with solving real-world problems, she says: “You’re creating something to help people. My favorite question to answer is, ‘Can you make this better or easier?’”
For her work, the nonprofit Professional Women in Construction named her one of its 20 Under 40: Women in Construction for 2025.
Kizildemir is passionate about mentoring young engineers and being an IEEE volunteer. She says she has made it her mission to “pack as much impact into my years as possible.”
A bright student in Türkiye
She was born in Istanbul to a father who is a professional drummer and a mother who worked in magazine advertising and sales. Kizildemir and her older brother pursued engineering careers despite neither parent being involved in the field. While she became an expert in civil and mechanical engineering, her brother is an industrial engineer.
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