MiguelAndrés is a doctoral candidate in Civil Engineering at Virginia Tech. His research interests include sustainable infrastructure design and planning, smart and resilient cities, and the development of engineers who not only have strong technical and practical knowledge but the social awareness and agency to address global humanitarian, environmental, and social justice challenges.

MiguelAndrés earned a Master of Science degree as a Fulbright scholar in civil engineering at Iowa State University. His undergraduate studies were in civil engineering at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) in Ecuador. At USFQ he taught full-time, advised students, led thesis projects, and directed community involvement projects. He also worked in the construction industry for three years as the Director of the Planning, Design, and Construction Department of a land and infrastructure development company.

Currently, MiguelAndrés uses qualitative methods to understand risk aversion among civil engineers and explores a phenomenon of citizen-led urban prototyping to change risk perceptions. Furthermore, he is working on developing a decision support framework for disaster response, assessing engineering students’ agency to address climate change, and teaching empathy studies in engineering and higher education. For him, social justice is a concept that should always be involved in discussions on infrastructure.