Marian G. Alicea

About Marian G. Alicea

Ms. Alicea is a coastal engineer and data scientist with over a decade of experience helping coastal communities enhance their resilience through advanced modeling, flood mitigation planning, and storm risk adaptation. She integrates coastal engineering and data science to inform evidence-based, risk-informed decision-making that supports long-term resilience strategies.She currently serves as an Assistant Vice President - Coastal Engineer at WSP, where she leads technical efforts on coastal adaptation and infrastructure projects across the southeastern U.S, the Caribbean, Central and South America. Prior to this role, she served as a Senior Coastal Engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – Norfolk District, where she led the development of engineering appendices, collaborative modeling efforts with ERDC, and played a key role in multidisciplinary feasibility studies, including the Peninsula Coastal Storm Risk Management (CSRM) project in Virginia and the Collier County and Miami-Dade County CSRM projects in Florida.Her earlier experience includes work with USACE San Francisco and Jacksonville Districts where she specialized in CSRM, navigational dredging, beneficial reuse of sediment, and beach nourishment projects, as well as with CDM Smith, where she supported FEMA’s Building Science Branch and served as a subject matter expert on FEMA BRIC and HMTAP initiatives.Ms. Alicea integrates geospatial analysis, hydrodynamic modeling, and coastal process simulations into project delivery. Her research background, refined at the University of Miami’s SUSTAIN Lab, focused on hybrid reef breakwater system stability, and she brings this academic rigor to applied engineering practice.She holds advanced degrees from Virginia Tech, a Graduate Coastal Engineering Certificate from Old Dominion University and is a licensed Professional Engineer in multiple states across the U.S. and the Caribbean.

Experience

1. Assistant Vice President, Coastal Engineer

   WSP in the U.S.

   May 2025 — Present · Miami, FL, US

Education

• Utah State University

  Graduate Certificate, Federal Environmental Policy and Law (NEPA - National Environmental Policy Act)

  2020

• Virginia Tech

  Master of Science - MS, Environmental/Environmental Health Engineering

  2016

• Virginia Tech

  Graduate Certificate, Future Professoriate - Pedagogy

  2018

• Old Dominion University

  Graduate Certificate, Coastal Engineering

  2020

• Kennesaw State University - Southern Polytechnic College of Engineering and Engineering Technology

  Bachelor of Science - BS, Civil Engineering; Environmental Engineering

  2013

• Virginia Tech

  Master of Science - MS, Civil Engineering

  2018

• University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science

  Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Ocean Engineering

Skills

• Environmental Engineering
• Powerpoint
• Microsoft Excel
• Autocad Civil 3d
• Cad
• Microsoft Sql Server
• Engineering
• Tableau
• Power Bi
• Matlab
• Microsoft Word
• Mathematica
• Photoshop
• Modflow
• Html
• Autocad
• Gis
• Environmental Compliance
• Public Speaking
• Solidworks
• Project Management
• C++
• Autodesk Revit Mep
• Research
• Adobe Creative Suite
• Consulting
• Revit
• R
• Java
• Autodesk Revit Architecture
• Microsoft Office
• Monitored Natural Attenuation
• Sustainability
• Surveying