Guillermo Díaz-Fañas

CEEAA Young Alumni Achievement Award, 2019

For creative yet practical application of geotechnical, structural, earthquake and instrumentation engineering to the evaluation of risks from earthquakes to New York City’s essential infrastructure and for finding common-sense solutions to mitigate those risks; for outstanding leadership in mentoring young engineers through the New York City Architecture, Construction and Engineering (ACE) program; and for strong advocacy for diversity and inclusion of underrepresented groups in civil engineering.

Biography

Guillermo Díaz-Fañas is a Senior Technical Principal in Earthquake and Geotechnical Engineering and Multi-Hazard Resilience with the Geotechnical & Tunneling Technical Excellence Center of WSP USA. His main areas of expertise include performance and risk-based design, and seismic hazard analysis. In his nine years of professional experience, he has worked on projects around the world as part of design teams on aspects of geotechnical engineering, structural health monitoring, foundation design and earthquake engineering. Currently, he is working on infrastructure transportation and building projects in Canada, Latin America and throughout the United States.

Díaz-Fañas holds several positions of leadership with the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. He is a member of the newly created University of Illinois CEE Alumni Association Young Engineers Division, and also serves as the founding President of the Queer Advocacy & Knowledge Exchange, a national NGO dedicated to empowering LGBTQ+ individuals in the architecture, engineering and construction fields. 

In addition to the 2019 CEEAA Young Alumnus Award, Díaz-Fañas has been recognized with the 2019 Engineering News Record – NY Top 20 under 40, the 2019 Top LGBTQ+ Business Leaders under 40, and the 2018 ASCE New Faces of Civil Engineering awards, as well as the 2017 WSP Research and Innovation Fellowship.