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Pablo van der LugtBiobased building specialist TU Delft Architectural engineer dr. ir. Pablo van der Lugt obtained his PhD at Technical University Delft in 2008 for his research about the environmental impact (LCA) of engineered biobased materials. Since then he has been active in the building industry as senior consultant on the themes sustainability, circularity and biobased building, ever maintaining a connection with the academia through TU Delft – AMS Institute. He is the author of several books on biobased building, including Tomorrow’s Timber www.tomorrows-timber.com (2020) and Booming Bamboo (2017) www.boomingbamboo.com of which the revisited edition will be launched spring 2024. He regularly publishes his research findings in popular magazines and scientific journals and conference proceedings.
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Alice MoncasterProfessor of Sustainable Construction Alice Moncaster is a Professor of Sustainable Construction at the University of the West of England (UWE) Bristol, School of Architecture and Environment. Alice has dedicated her research to radically improving the environmental sustainability and resilience of the built environment to climate change. This work is accomplished in collaboration with national and international partners in multiple disciplines, always with a close link to practitioners and the industry. Her multifaceted career includes an engineering degree from Cambridge University, a decade in the construction industry with a focus on infrastructure and structural building projects, research at the Earthquake Engineering Research Centre at Bristol University, and a PhD from the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia. She also held research and lectureship posts at the University of Cambridge, where she served as Director of the Interdisciplinary Design for the Built Environment (IDBE) masters programme. From there she moved to the Open University where she founded the first Built Environment research cluster and served as the first University Lead for Sustainability for the Open Societal Challenges research programme. Her main areas of expertise are the life cycle assessment and embodied impacts of buildings and urban environments, application of circular economy principles to the built environment, and retrofitting existing buildings, including heritage. Alice also studies resilience and future climate adaptation, including reducing risks from changing climates like flooding and overheating and the potential benefits of nature based solutions in an urban setting. She is interested in understanding socio-technical practices and decision-making processes in building projects, as well as the role of community engagement for sustainability and resilience. Her scholarly accomplishments are numerous, with her work becoming regular publications. She holds the esteemed position of Professor of Sustainable Construction as part of CABER (Centre for Architecture and Built Environment Research) at UWE. |
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Chelsea HeveranAssistant Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Dr. Chelsea Heveran is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at Montana State University. She earned a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder, where her dissertation research focused on the impacts of aging and kidney disease on bone fragility. Dr. Heveran then completed postdoctoral training in Civil Engineering, also at the University of Colorado Boulder, and engineered photosynthetic living building materials. Dr. Heveran’s current research efforts continue to work towards understanding determinants of bone fracture resistance and applying these lessons towards bone-inspired engineered living materials. In 2020, she was co-awarded the National Science Foundation Idea Machine Meritorious Prize with Dr. Juan Pablo Gevaudan. Her research has been featured in the New York Times, ABC, Yellowstone Public Radio, and other national and regional programs. |
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Laia Mogas-SoldevillaAssistant Professor of Architecture, Director of DumoLab Research Laia Mogas-Soldevila is an Assistant Professor of Graduate Architecture and Director of DumoLab Research at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania. Laia’s research focuses on radically sustainable material practices bridging science, engineering, and the arts. Her pedagogy supports novel theory and applied methods understanding biomaterials and bio-based fabrication in product design and architecture. Over the past ten years while teaching at UPC, MIT, Cornell, and Penn, Laia has built scholarship reconsidering matter as a fundamental design driver and partnering with scientists to redesign it towards unprecedented environmental capabilities. She has recently received the prestigious Johnson&Johnson Foundation Woman in STEM2D Scholar Award as well as Penn Grants by the Research Foundation, Environmental Innovation, Sachs Art Innovation, and Global Engagement Fund. Her work has been shown at the NYC and SF MoMA as part of Mediated Matter Group in 2022, at Milan’s and London’s Design Weeks in 2023, the ICA Philadelphia for ACADIA 2023, the Athens Opera House during Nostos Festival 2021, and at the Barcelona D-HUB for Design Does 2020. Laia holds an interdisciplinary doctorate bridging biomaterials science, biomedical engineering, and advanced design from Tufts University School of Engineering, two master’s degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Architecture, and is a licensed architect with a minor in Fine Arts by the Polytechnic University of Catalonia School of Architecture in Barcelona and the École Nationale Supérieure de Beaux-Arts in Paris. |
