Dennis Poon

About

Dennis Poon is Managing Principal and Vice Chairman Emeritus at Thornton Tomasetti, Inc., a 1500+ person, privately held engineering and technology firm. Throughout his 46+ years experience he has been responsible for the design and construction of high-rise offices, hotels, airports, arenas and residential buildings throughout the US and abroad. He specializes in super and mega tall mixed use towers and complexes, and has expertise in the application of state-of-the-art engineering technologies for building analysis, design, construction and project management, including project delivery strategies.

Mr. Poon is the structural design principal of some of the tallest buildings including the 700+m tall Suzhou Zhongnan Center in Suzhou, China, the 600m tall Ping An International Finance Center in Shenzhen, China, the 638m tall Signature Tower in Jakarta, Indonesia, the 636m tall Wuhan Greenland Center in Wuhan, China, and the 632m tall Shanghai Tower in Shanghai, China.

Other notable projects include the 508-meter-tall Taipei 101 in Taiwan, the 452m tall Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, New York City World Financial Center; the 66-story high-rise mixed-use Plaza 66 in Shanghai; O’Hare International Airport in Chicago; MGM CityCenter Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas and the Qatar Education City Convention Center.

Mr. Poon holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Texas at El Paso and a master’s degree in civil engineering from Columbia University. Mr. Poon was awarded Engineering News Record’s Top 25 Newsmakers of 2010. In addition, Dennis has received numerous awards including the ACEC Diamond award for MGM City Center, the ACEC National Grand Award for the design of Taipei 101, the Diamond Award from NYACE, the National Recognition Award from ACEC as well as a US CIB Award of Merit for the Plaza 66 Structural System, two James F. Lincoln Arc Welding Foundation Awards for Bally’s Park Place Casino Hotel in Atlantic City, NJ and the Pedestrian Bridges at Fifth Avenue Place in Pittsburgh, a Structural Engineers Association of Illinois Merit Award for the Chicago Board of Trade Building, and the Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business Award.

He has lectured in Universities worldwide including MIT, Columbia, Delft University in Holland, NJ Institute of Technology and Hong Kong City University on the topic such as high-rise building design and steel and concrete structure design.