In the heart of New York City, a brilliant engineer is quietly revolutionizing how we protect lives through better building design. Sena Kizildemir, an IEEE Senior Member and project engineer at Thornton Tomasetti's applied science division, spends her days running simulations of disasters so that real world catastrophes claim fewer lives.

Her mission is both profound and practical: understand how buildings fail under extreme conditions like impacts and explosions, then help designers create structures that won't. "Simulations help us understand what could happen before it occurs in real life, to be able to better plan for it," Kizildemir explains with the quiet confidence of someone who knows their work matters.

The inspiration for this field came from one of America's darkest days. When the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001, engineers discovered that skyscrapers hadn't been designed with such catastrophic structural failures in mind. Kizildemir is part of the generation changing that reality, ensuring that future structures can better protect the people inside them.

Her journey to this meaningful work began in Istanbul, where a young girl with endless curiosity spent her childhood building miniature Lego houses for ants and wondering how everything around her was constructed. Neither of her parents worked in engineering, her father is a professional drummer and her mother worked in magazine advertising, but that didn't stop Kizildemir from acing her entrance exams and winning a spot at a STEM-focused high school.

"Engineering is one of the few careers where you can make a lasting impact on the world, and I plan on mine being meaningful," she says, and she's already making good on that promise.

After earning her bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Işik University in Turkey with a full scholarship, Kizildemir moved to the United States to pursue her master's and Ph.D. at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, again on full scholarship. Her doctoral research focused on making railroads safer by detecting invisible microcracks that threaten passenger safety. Working directly with the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration, her team's research is now being used to revise rail-building guidelines and inspection protocols across the country.

The Ripple Effect

The impact of Kizildemir's work extends far beyond individual buildings or rail lines. Every simulation she runs, every structural weakness she identifies, and every mitigation strategy she helps develop potentially saves countless lives. When engineers and architects use her research to design stronger, more resilient structures, entire communities benefit.

Her dedication hasn't gone unnoticed. In 2025, the nonprofit Professional Women in Construction named her one of its 20 Under 40: Women in Construction, recognizing not just her technical brilliance but her commitment to mentoring young engineers.

"You're creating something to help people," Kizildemir says about her work. "My favorite question to answer is, 'Can you make this better or easier?'"

That question drives her every day as she mixes creativity with problem-solving, turning complex physics and engineering challenges into real-world solutions. She's made it her personal mission to "pack as much impact into my years as possible," and at Thornton Tomasetti, she's doing exactly that.

From a curious child building Lego houses in Istanbul to an award-winning engineer making buildings safer across America and beyond, Sena Kizildemir proves that one person's dedication to solving problems can create a safer world for everyone.