DENNIS C.K. POON, P.E.

Vice Chairman

During his 30-plus year career Dennis Poon has been responsible for the design and construction of supertall structures, mixed-use buildings, hotels, airports, arenas and residential buildings worldwide. High on the list of his accomplishments is the role he played in leading the structural design teams for three of the tallest buildings in China: Taipei 101 in Taiwan (101 stories and 508 meters tall), and Shanghai Tower (121 stories and 632 meters tall) in Shanghai and Ping An International Finance Center (115 stories and 660 meters tall) in Shenzhen, both of which are currently under construction. Other notable projects include New York City’s World Financial Center; Plaza 66 in Shanghai; the Chicago Board of Trade Tower and O’Hare International Airport in Chicago; and Block A of the CityCenter hotel, casino and convention center complex in Las Vegas.

Dennis is currently working on several other supertall buildings and mixed-use complexes such as the 606-meter, 119-story Wuhan Greenland Center in Wuhan, China, the 600-meter, 112-story Signature Tower, Jakarta in Indonesia and high-rise projects in South Korea and Azerbaijan. He has extensive expertise in the seismic design and performance-based design of complex mixed-use structures worldwide. For his effort to modernize China’s building codes for supertall structures, he was named one of the 25 Top Newsmakers of 2010 by Engineering News-Record magazine. In addition to his responsibilities as vice chairman and managing principal of Thornton Tomasetti, Dennis is in charge of the firm’s operations in Asia, overseeing offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai, PRC and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Dennis 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. He has lectured at universities worldwide including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Delft Technical University in the Netherlands, the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University. He has received numerous prestigious awards including the ACEC National Grand Award for the design of Taipei 101.