Shadi Nazarian

Shadi, who was recently selected as the inaugural H. Ralph Hawkins, FAIA, Chair in Architecture, and a Professor at UTA has over 30 years of experience in architectural design, practice, and teaching. She also has more than a decade of interdisciplinary research in the development of sustainable and functionally graded composite materials, achieving transitional interface between areas with varying structural, insulative, and optical characteristics using alternative environmentally friendly binders such as geopolymers produced from industrial byproducts. Such innovative solutions are impactful in saving cost and embodied and operational energy, particularly in harsh environmental conditions.

Her move to UTA came after 12 years of teaching, research, and service at Penn State Department of Architecture, where she directed the Transitional Material Interface (TMI) Laboratory and was a founding member of the Additive Construction Laboratory (AddConLab), building upon the success of the PennStateDen@Mars team, which she co-led in the NASA’s 3D-Printed Mars Habitat Challenge Competition. At PSU, she was also an affiliate faculty member of the Materials Research Institute (MRI), the Additive Manufacturing and Design (AMD) program, and the Stuckeman Center for Design Computing (SCDC).

She joined X-Hab as a co-founder after taking part in a sponsored research program brought to Penn State by  Xtreme Habitat Institute (XHI) and the State of Alaska, titled “Development of Low-Cost Housing for Remote Areas in Alaska and the Arctic Region.” Shadi had explored development of affordable modular micro housing in the context of disaster relief while teaching at Cornell and at SUNY at Buffalo in response to Haiti’s devastating earthquakes.

Shadi holds a professional degree in Architecture from the University of Minnesota, a degree in Environmental Design, also from the U of M, and a post-professional degree in Architecture from Cornell University.