NEW YORK – The Thornton Tomasetti board of directors and managing principals announce the promotion of Robert Otani, P.E., LEED AP BD+C to principal of the international engineering firm. He is based in the New York office.
Mr. Otani has more than 18 years of professional experience in structural design, project management and advanced computational design and modeling. He has worked on a variety of sports, commercial high-rise, infrastructure, aviation and cultural projects as well as structural art. Mr. Otani is Thornton Tomasetti’s special structures leader. He has extensive experience in seismic, wind, dynamic and thermal analysis and is an expert in the design and detailing of special structures.
A longtime member of the Structural Engineers Association of New York (SEAoNY), Mr. Otani has been chairman of the codes and standards committee and served as president of the organization in 2007. He was a technical member of the New York City Model Code Program for three years, and is the author of several technical papers and publications.
Mr. Otani is a licensed professional engineer in New York as well as New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Alberta, Canada, and aLEEDAccredited Professional Building Design + Construction. He is an adjunct instructor at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and an adjunct assistant professor at the Pratt Institute’s Undergraduate School of Architecture, both of which are in New York.
Mr. Otani holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Rutgers University in New Jersey and a master’s degree in civil engineering from Pennsylvania State University.