Menzer Pehlivan, Ph.D., P.E. , said she’s always been in a hurry. And that’s surely the truth. The geotechnical engineer from Turkey knows four languages, has a Ph.D., spent two years working in NewYork, was featured in a movie, and is now in the Seattle office of CH2M, one of the largest firms in the world. And all of that by the time she was 31. A rising earthquake engineer who’s passionate about a science that advances with each seismic shift, Pehlivan sees nothing but — and has earned nothing but — opportunity. During a recent research trip to Mexico, where in September 2017 a 7.1-magnitude earth- quake rocked the nation’s largest city, Pehlivan witnessed firsthand what good engineering, and the building codes they inspire, can do. While hundreds did perish in September — af- ter rigorous codes had been installed — it was but a fraction of those who died there in 1985 when an 8-magnitude earthquake killed around 10,000. “You can save people’s lives,” Pehlivan said, speaking to the highest calling of her profes- sion. “When you see what [an earthquake] can do to a community, it becomes your passion.” If Mexico City proved up to the challenge in September, the same cannot be said of many other parts of the world. In 2008, more than 69,000 died in Sichuan, China. In Haiti, as many as 160,000 died in 2010. And in Nepal in 2015 — a scene to which Pehlivan traveled for research — around 9,000 died. The list is long; the numbers are staggering. The geotechnical engineer’s work, it seems, is never done.
Pehlivan said growing up she wanted to be an actress, but that changed after the early morn- ing of Aug. 17, 1999, when the 7.8-magnitude Kocaeli earthquake struck about 200 miles northwest of Pehlivan’s hometown of An- kara, Turkey. The high-rise apartment building where she lived shook. The family poured out of the home, spent the night in their car, and awoke to the terrible news: As many as 17,000 people dead, another 40,000 injured, and 250,000 without a home. “I knew in 45 seconds what you could lose,” Pehlivan said, referring to this turning point in her life. But transitioning from dreams of Tinseltown to reality as an engineer took years. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil en- gineering from Middle East Technical Univer- sity in Ankara by 2009. From there she went to the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned her Ph.D. in civil engineering in 2013. During and after her formal education, she was frequently published in peer-reviewed journals, and honed her public speaking with numerous presentations. Fittingly, a seismic event took place in the engineering industry, one that Pehlivan says will be beneficial for U.S.-based geotechnical engineers like herself. In August 2017, Jacobs announced the $3.2 billion acquisition of her employer, CH2M, the result being a mega-firm with about 74,000 people and a backlog of $27 billion. “I see opportunities there,” she said of the merger. “I’m positive about it.”
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february 2018
csengineermag.com
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