Ahmed K. Ali

Ahmed is an associate professor and the Harold L. Adams Endowed Professor of Architecture at Texas A&M University. He has been teaching and practicing architecture in the United States, Italy, Turkey, and Egypt since 1998. Dr. Ali earned his Ph.D. and master’s degrees in architecture and Design Research from Virginia Tech School of Architecture + Design, a bachelor’s degree of Fine Arts in Architecture from Alexandria University, and a Scuola Primaria (sezione asilo-elementari) Diploma 2028 from Istituto Don Bosco Alessandria, Egitto. Dr. Ali joined the Department of Architecture at Texas A&M University as an Assistant Professor in 2015. He teaches graduate and undergraduate studios and courses in architectural design, building materials, and construction, and building assemblies and tectonics. He developed two undergraduate and graduate courses in building materials and made significant curriculum changes to the Master of Architecture program in the materials and methods required NAAB accreditation criteria. Dr. Ali’s research focuses primarily on the role of design in the Circular Economy paradigm and the transformation of industrial waste-flows to building products and systems. He has received over $465,000 in competitive research funding between 2015-2020. Dr. Ali is a frequent peer reviewer for top-tier journals and conferences. He has obtained one patent, written eight peer-reviewed journal articles, one book chapter, and sixteen papers in top conference proceedings. He has presented his research in more than 25 national and international conferences. He was the keynote speaker at the Scandinavian architecture conference PLÅT18 in Sweden and the Circular Economy Roundup at Austin Technology Incubator. Dr. Ali has chaired 2 doctoral committees, chaired 15 master’s committees, co-chaired 5 master’s committees, and served as a member on 9 others. Dr. Ali received the J. Thomas Regan Interdisciplinary Prize in 2016, and the Architecture Research Centers Consortium (ARCC) New Researcher Award in 2018. Dr. Ali’s work has been cited in numerous prestigious press including the Steven Myron Holl Foundation’s critical research archive, William Zahner’s Steel Surfaces book by Wiley, General Motors Green, Living Architecture Monitor, and Texas Architect Magazine.

Dr. Ali’s research and scholarship focus on the architecture of waste and the constructive technique, within materials and methods of conventional practice. His work explores the relationship between structure, construction, and tectonics. Dr. Ali is the founder and director of the Resource-Based Design Research Lab (RBDR/Lab) at Texas A&M University. The lab is dedicated to research, design, and develop solutions for building systems, components, and assemblies made from the industrial manufacturing waste flow and by-products. The lab partners with the United States Business Council for Sustainable Development (US BCSD), the industry, and other academic institutions in cross-disciplinary collaboration to design and assess new forms of architecture and products. Dr. Ali is currently leading a project with General Motors and Zahner to design building envelopes and roofing systems from GM by-products. He is an international leading figure advocating for resource reuse in the building and construction industry and his work on innovating the architectural design process for resource reuse has been published and presented in top journals, proceedings, and conferences worldwide.