Dr. Zofia K. Rybkowski is an Associate Professor in the Department of Construction Science of the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University and holds an endowed Harold Adams Interdisciplinary Professorship. Her current research interest on innovations in construction, including automation and 3D-printing of large-scale structures in the built environment, is driven by a recognition that industry-wide transformations should be done in alignment with environmental sustainability and social responsibility. Dr. Rybkowski has served as principal investigator for National Science Foundation-funded research on biomimetic, self-regulated building envelopes, inspired by plant stomata, which was recently featured in an NSF Science Nation documentary, and is currently leading a research effort to develop environmentally sustainable materials for large scale 3D-printing, funded by the President’s Excellence Fund (X-Grant). She served on the Scientific Committee of the 1st International Conference on 3D Printing and Transportation held in Washington DC.
Dr. Rybkowski holds degrees from Stanford, Brown, Harvard, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and UC Berkeley, where she earned a PhD. Her interdisciplinary background, which includes biology (MS, BS), architecture (MArch), and civil engineering (PhD, MS, MPhil) facilitates system-level research intersecting disciplinary boundaries. She specializes in implementing Lean-Integrated Project Delivery simulation tools as a means to effectively address complex, multidisciplinary challenges, and has delivered a TEDx talk on serious games and simulations as a means to illuminate lean efficiency principles and align multidisciplinary teams toward common goals. This way of managing projects, enables her to effectively and efficiently interweave the various disciplinary threads needed to holistically tackle the large-scale 3D printing challenge. She was awarded the Regan Interdisciplinary Faculty Prize in 2018, was named the Presidential Impact Fellow for the Texas A&M University’s College of Architecture in 2019, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Associated General Contractors (AGC) Education and Research Foundation. She teaches graduate level classes in advanced productivity and environmental sustainability, and is a legacy LEED AP.
