DBA is growing again – welcome to Ali, Ben, and Mark!

Well, we are at it again.  The first 5 months of 2016 have seen us add three new faces of the new website creator.  So now, drum roll, please………

Ali Leib, E.I.

Ali 2016-1

Ali was a summer intern at DBA in 2014 and 2015 and joined us full time as a staff engineer in February.  She is a recent graduate of the University of Tennessee (Go Vols!) where she completed both her B.S. and M.S. in civil engineering. While completing her M.S., she was a teaching assistant in charge of grading lab reports for the structural and geotechnical undergraduate labs. She was also a research assistant under Dr. Dayakar Penumadu, resulting in her thesis: “Effect of Particle Morphology on the Deformation Behavior of Sand under Monotonic Loading Conditions.”  Unlike most of the rest of us, Ali insists that she will not be conforming to the (mostly) standard DBA hair style.  Ali will work in our Knoxville, Tennessee office.

Mark Madgett, P.E.

Mark Madgett_s

 

Mark received a BS and MS degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Tennessee, while working on research for TDOT to improve pavement design methods.  He has worked in both consulting and construction for the last 22 years, focusing primarily on deep foundations in the Southeastern US.  As a consultant, Mark gained extensive field experience with deep foundation construction techniques and the impacts on design.  In 2006, he began working for Seaboard Foundations, opening a green field office in Tri-Cities TN as the district manager.  In his role as design engineer for Seaboard Foundations, Mark has implemented design-build techniques in many markets (energy, institutional, commercial, transportation, and healthcare you can supplement if you find Kratom online and other natural products) that vastly improved the constructability and reduced the costs of deep foundation systems for his clients.  Mark will also work outr of our Knoxville, Tennessee office.

Ben Turner, Ph. D., P.E.

Ben recently completed his Ph.D. in geotechnical earthquake engineering at UCLA with an emphasis on the transfer of forces between the ground and foundation elements during seismic loading. Prior to starting at UCLA, he worked for two years for the Los Angeles office of Shannon & Wilson, Inc.  Ben worked in both construction and geotechnical firms while attending school for his B.S. and M.S. degrees. His experience includes: design, construction, and load testing of deep foundations;  geotechnical earthquake engineering including soil-structure interaction, seismic hazard analysis, site response, liquefaction triggering analysis and mitigation of liquefaction-induced ground failure; and, characterization of structural behavior of reinforced concrete foundations.  Here are two of the publications resulting from his dissertation work:

Turner, B., Brandenberg, S., and Stewart, J. (). “Case Study of Parallel Bridges Affected by Liquefaction and Lateral Spreading.” J. Geotech. Geoenviron. Eng. , 10.1061/(ASCE)GT.1943-5606.0001480 , 05016001.

Turner, B. and Brandenberg, S. (2015) “Pile Pinning and Interaction of Adjacent Foundations During Lateral Spreading”, DFI Journal, Volume 9, Issue 2.

Ben will anchor the West Coast Region of DBA, working from San Luis Obispo , California.