In Profile: Roman Stocker finds big effects from tiny organisms
Roman StockerPhoto: M. Scott Brauer Roman Stocker was introduced to the world of civil engineering early, often, and all over the place. Born in Vienna to parents from the South Tyrol, a bilingual region in northern Italy, Stocker says, “We moved around a bit.” That’s a bit of an understatement.Stocker’s father is a civil engineer who moved wherever his work took him. The family’s time in Vienna coincided with his work managing the construction of a bridge; they then moved to Nigeria for the construction of a large dam. After two years, the Stockers relocated to a remote desert in Yemen, site of a new highway to Saudi Arabia.From a very early age, Stocker says, he was exposed to large construction sites. He grew up experiencing firsthand the rigors, and the excitement, of these remote conditions, far from most modern conveniences, where many things needed to be built from scratch....