Pegged at Six as an Engineer, Jakob Guido Grabs His 'Destiny' With Gusto

Jakob Guido’s engineering talent manifested at quite a young age. In kindergarten, he was photographed playing with blocks behind a sign that read: “Future Engineer.” Months later, his first-grade science teacher observed his advanced organizational abilities and pronounced: “You’re going to be an engineer.”

Fast forward 15 years, and Guido, a rising senior majoring in civil engineering, has pursued his seeming destiny with boundless energy, formidable skills and enviable success, punctuating those early predictions with an exclamation point.

As president of NJIT’s chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers for the past two years, he has nearly doubled the group’s active membership, organized regional civil engineering conferences on the NJIT campus and set up – and run – open houses, career days and engineering events for his department. In fact, he even produced a five-page brochure to help the department’s ambassadors glide through these events, supplying the necessary information and anticipating the hard questions from prospective students and their families.

Guido was the chair of the 2019 Metropolitan Steel Bridge Competition, sponsored by the American Institute of Steel Construction responsible for organizing, leading and obtaining funds for the regional contest that brought more than 10 schools to NJIT this past April. While NJIT did not win it, the team placed first in several key categories. Expectations are running high for next year.

It therefore came as a thrill, but perhaps not a total shock, when he was awarded this year’s Sol Seid Student Award for Excellence from the Professional Engineers in Construction, bringing recognition and praise from prominent people in the field he aims to join, as well as a $10,000 scholarship.

In May, Guido also won the George F. Kelley Memorial Scholarship from the American Council of Engineering Companies of New Jersey, which honors the student who demonstrates the “highest degree of talent and ingenuity” throughout New Jersey and bestows a $5,000 prize.

“Being recognized with these two scholarships was truly an honor, and I am beyond grateful toward the faculty and staff in the civil engineering department who not only nominated me for the scholarships, but also gave me opportunities to step up and be a student leader in the department,” Guido said. “It feels great knowing that my hard work in the department has not gone unnoticed.”

Meanwhile, he is busily acquiring experience in the real world of bridges, tunnels and highways. Last summer, he interned in the structures division of the consulting engineering firm, HNTB of Parsippany, N.J., where he helped develop an emergency vehicle rating process for the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. Specifically, he worked on an appendix to the agency’s load rating manual for bridges, a job that had him performing nearly 50 load-rating simulations on a software program to determine the overall structural strength of the bridges using multiple methods to help determine the best method of obtaining this data.

“In conjunction with that project, I was also tasked with updating bridge rating reports for about 100 bridges in the Newark area based on a state requirement to inspect bridges regularly to ensure they are meeting safe standards,” he noted.

It is perhaps no surprise that Guido says he wants to run “big projects” when he enters the field full-time. And he will do it with a mix of earnest professionalism, camaraderie – and a sense of fun.

“A common catchphrase my friends and peers in civil engineering like to say is, ‘Who saves more lives: doctors or civil engineers? The emphatic response amongst our somewhat biased crowd is ‘civil engineers,’” he recounted in a recent essay. “While we often say this in a joking manner, there is a decent amount of truth behind it. A civil engineer is responsible for the structures they design to be used by hundreds and thousands of people each day. Every time a car successfully crosses a bridge or a person enters a building, that is thanks to the hard work of a civil engineer, ensuring that the given structure is always safe.”