2025 Engineer of the Year

Michael W. Derr, P.E. is Principal-in-Charge of Geo-Technology Associates’ (GTA) Quakertown office and provides technical support and geotechnical services for the firm’s Wilkes-Barre and Philadelphia offices. He has nearly 24 years of experience with GTA, including the past 14 years in the Lehigh Valley, where he was born and raised. Mike is a licensed Professional Engineer in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland and holds Special Inspector certifications from the City of Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspections and the New Jersey Department of Consumer Affairs.

Mike provides geotechnical design and consultation services for a wide range of residential, commercial, academic, retail, and industrial projects. His responsibilities include quality assurance and quality control oversight, staff training and supervision, management of soils and concrete laboratories, and preparation of reports, drawings, proposals, and budgets. He has extensive experience delivering projects in sinkhole-prone areas and regions affected by historic deep mining, requiring specialized subsurface stabilization techniques.

He previously served as Chair of GTA’s Geotechnical Committee, President of the Lehigh Valley Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and Secretary of the Lehigh Valley Engineering Council. Mike is also a member of the Delaware Valley Geo-Institute, NAIOP, and the Urban Land Institute, and is a voting member of ASTM.

Mike founded the Lehigh Valley ASCE EPIC Golf Outing, which has raised funds for LVPSPE’s engineering scholarships and supported STEM outreach initiatives for more than eight years. He also helped organize LVASCE’s Dream Big: Engineering Our World program, which introduced over 5,000 middle and high school students to the engineering profession over a five-year period.

Mike holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from Drexel University and a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Colby-Sawyer College. He resides in West Bethlehem with his wife, Kate, and their son, Owen. He volunteers with the Delaware & Lehigh National Heritage Corridor and The Old Freemansburg Association and serves as Vice President of the Bethlehem Soccer Club, where he also coaches.

Meara began her education with a B.A in Physics from Barnard College at Columbia University and went on to receive an M. Eng in Water Resources Engineering from the University of New Hampshire. She started her career designing a wide variety of stormwater mitigation projects and now works as the District Engineer for Northampton County Conservation District.

Meara is very active in environmental conservation work, acting as the secretary of the Watershed Coalition of the Lehigh Valley. She plans the technical section of the Lehigh Valley Watershed Conference every other year, and assists with a disparate medley of community and in-ground projects to improve the health of the Lehigh River Watershed and its many associated tributaries.

Meara runs a monthly happy hour for women in the engineering field to meet up and network, and is an active member of the Lehigh Valley chapter of the Society of Women Engineers.

When not working or volunteering, Meara enjoys playing the saxophone and clarinet, crocheting, reading, running, baking complicated cakes, playing board games, and going hiking with her husband Erik and dog Potato.