Linda Jean Miller (born 1961) is an American

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing i ...

who works for

Bechtel Bechtel Corporation () is an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company founded in San Francisco, California in 1898, and headquartered in Reston, Virginia in the Washington metropolitan area. , the '' E ...

. She is currently director of the excavation works for the

Sydney Metro Sydney Metro is a fully automated rapid transit rail system in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It currently consists of the Metro North West & Bankstown Line, running between Tallawong and Sydenham and consisting of 21 stations on of t ...

project, having recently been in charge of

Crossrail Crossrail is a completed railway project centred on London. It provides a high-frequency hybrid commuter rail and rapid transit system, akin to the Réseau Express Régional, RER in Paris and the S-Bahn systems of German-speaking countries, kn ...

Farringdon Station Farringdon () is an interchange station located in Clerkenwell, London, England, in the London Borough of Islington, just outside the boundary of the City of London for London Underground, Elizabeth line and National Rail services. The statio ...

Education

Miller is from Arizona. She has a bachelor's degree in engineering from

United States Military Academy The United States Military Academy (USMA), commonly known as West Point, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York that educates cadets for service as Officer_(armed_forces)#United_States, comm ...

West Point, New York West Point is the oldest continuously occupied military post in the United States. Located on the Hudson River in New York (state), New York, General George Washington stationed his headquarters in West Point in the summer and fall of 1779 durin ...

. After graduating, Miller started her career in the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

, where she flew helicopters. She earned a master's degree in

engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...

from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

Career

Miller has worked at

for more than 35 years. Throughout her career she has been a champion of engineering projects that leave a positive legacy. While working on the Boston Central Artery, a 161-mile road and tunnel project, she appeared on a

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

documentary. She worked on a new launch project at

Cape Canaveral Cape Canaveral () is a cape (geography), cape in Brevard County, Florida, in the United States, near the center of the state's Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast. Officially Cape Kennedy from 1963 to 1973, it lies east of Merritt Island, separated ...

and the

Seattle Monorail Project The Seattle Monorail Project was a proposed five-line monorail system to be constructed in Seattle, Washington, US, as an extension of the existing Seattle Center Monorail. The , 17 station Green Line running from Ballard, Seattle, Ballard to Wes ...

. She worked on the Connaught Tunnel, a Victorian rail tunnel built in 1878 between Stratford and

North Woolwich North Woolwich is an area in the London Borough of Newham in East London, England, on the northern bank of the River Thames, across the river from Woolwich. It is connected to Woolwich by the Woolwich Ferry and Woolwich foot tunnel. Despite ...

. At the start the team only had 135 year-old drawings as a guide, and had to use giant props to support the excavation. She described the project as 'open heart surgery'. She thinks it is ''boom time'' for tunnelling, with new technology putting the UK at the cutting-edge. She was seconded as project manager of

Farringdon station Farringdon () is an interchange station located in Clerkenwell, London, England, in the London Borough of Islington, just outside the boundary of the City of London for London Underground, Elizabeth line and National Rail services. The statio ...

. The station includes platform and concourse tunnels, ticket halls, escalators, and

adit An adit (from Latin ''aditus'', entrance) or stulm is a horizontal or nearly horizontal passage to an underground mine. Miners can use adits for access, drainage, ventilation, and extracting minerals at the lowest convenient level. Adits are a ...

s built using sprayed concrete lining. In March 2017, Miller left the UK and moved to Australia to begin work on the

. She encourages all young women she meets to consider careers in engineering; including the children of

staff. She was selected as one of the

Top 50 Influential Women in Engineering In 2016 the Women's Engineering Society, Women's Engineering Society (WES), in collaboration with the ''Daily Telegraph'', produced an inaugural list of the United Kingdom's Top 50 Influential Women in Engineering, which was published on Internatio ...

in the UK in 2016. That year, she was shortlisted for the

WISE Campaign The WISE Campaign (Women into Science and Engineering) is a United Kingdom-based organization that encourages women and girls to value and pursue science, technology, engineering and maths-related courses in school or college and to move on into ...

2016 Woman of the Year Award. She appeared on the

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's second flagship channel, and it covers a wide range of subject matte ...

documentary about

, ''The Fifteen Billion Pound Railway''. She has been a speaker at the

Royal Institution The Royal Institution of Great Britain (often the Royal Institution, Ri or RI) is an organisation for scientific education and research, based in the City of Westminster. It was founded in 1799 by the leading British scientists of the age, inc ...

, the

Institution of Civil Engineers The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) is an independent professional association for civil engineers and a Charitable organization, charitable body in the United Kingdom. Based in London, ICE has over 92,000 members, of whom three-quarters ar ...

and

. In 2017 she was awarded an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for "services to engineering and to promoting gender equality".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Miller, Linda 1961 births United States Military Academy alumni Engineers from Arizona UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni American railway civil engineers Officers of the Order of the British Empire Living people 21st-century women engineers