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Alumni Profile:
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Deepal Eliatamby comes from a family of lawyers, but construction is the field that caught his interest - and kept it. Today he is the president of Alliance Consulting Engineers Inc., a successful civil engineering firm in Columbia.
Arriving in the United States in 1984 from his native Sri Lanka, Eliatamby preferred to attend college in the temperate climate of the Southeast, so he checked out various schools in the region. He finally settled on USC. “It was the best decision I’ve made in a while,” he said. “I don’t think I could have gotten a better education anywhere else.” In 1988 he received his BS degree and, a year later, his MS degree, both at USC and both in civil engineering.
Eliatamby’s record of accomplishment and recognition far exceeds the space constraints of this newsletter, but that record is without a doubt a commendable and enviable one. In 2004, to take just one example, the state of South Carolina passed “A concurrent resolution to extend the appreciation of the members of the South Carolina General Assembly to Mr. Deepal S. Eliatamby, P.E., for his continued service to his community and the state through his expertise in civil engineering….”
When asked why he remains so active in service to his community and the state, Eliatamby replied, “I just love working with people. It’s one of the things I really cherish about civil engineering - I get to travel and meet folks from the big cities and from the small towns.”
And he has not forgotten USC, to which he has generously given his time and financial assistance. In 1999, for example, at the age of 33, he funded a graduate fellowship. He himself was able to get a good education, he said, and now he feels an obligation to give back to USC, to the college, to the Department of Civil Engineering, and to the state as a whole. “We can talk all we want,” he said, “but we need to lead by example.”
Eliatamby is pleased with the direction the college and USC are taking under the leadership of Dean Amiridis and President Sorensen. “It’s the most exciting time to be a student or an alumnus of USC,” Eliatamby said. “And that goes not just for academics, but for sports and everything else. The excitement that’s occurring in Columbia and the state as a result is incredible.”
