David Waratuke

Professionally, David engineers building structures. He has worked on structures of all types and sizes from residential homes to skyscrapers and stadiums. He has half a dozen completed skyscrapers in Chicago including UBS Tower, Chase Center, and 191 North Wacker that he has worked on and several starting or under construction including One Museum Park East, One Museum Park West, and 600 Lake Shore Drive. David has provided primary analysis and design for the lateral systems to resist dynamic wind loading on the majority of these projects. 

David is also a musician and a music and audio enthusiast in addition to being an engineer. He has had a love of music from early childhood that lead to learning the trumpet. While not still actively performing due to professional and family time demands, David’s career as a musician included grade school concert bands; concert, jazz, musical pit, and marching bands in high school; and performing with the University of Illinois Bands including the Marching Illini, before nearly 80,000 people at Memorial Stadium, and with Concert Band I at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, during college. To further his understanding of music, David also completed two semesters of instruction in music theory during college.

By high school, David’s interests in music also lead him to realize the importance of quality audio reproduction in the enjoyment of recorded music. Throughout college, every spare dollar went into building a music collection and an audio system. He originally enrolled in the Engineering Physics program in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois with intent to become a speaker designer. After a sophomore year visit to the Engineering Placement Office (EPO), he switched to Civil Engineering, another field that had occupied much of his childhood, building things, when he realized that getting a job as audio designer was as much circumstance as desire. The Dean who ran the EPO had not heard of some of the more mainstream audio companies; if they did not come to a major engineering college to recruit the jobs were likely scarce.

David has also put his engineering education to use to absorb many related engineering topics. Such topics as acoustics, engineering noise control, and the physics of musical instruments have captured his attention. The physics of these various systems under vibrational loads has direct relation to a number of topics from David’s engineering education.

David hopes to bring a little different perspective to a field dominated by electrical engineers. With a background in structural mechanics, mechanics of materials, fluid mechanics, structural analysis and design, structural dynamics, and earthquake engineering, David can illuminate the mechanical side of the electro-mechanical system that is audio reproduction.

BSCE, 1994, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

MSCE, 1995, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign