WBC2025 is drawing together leading researchers and industry personel within the built environment to present at the conference, and is please to announce the following World Building Congress speakers.
Keynote
Brodie Boland – McKinsey & Company
Brodie Boland is a Partner with McKinsey & Company, leading the Firm’s sustainability work in the built environment. He serves investors, governments, technology firms, and other clients on both decarbonization and climate adaptation. He has led decarbonization efforts addressing >20 megatonnes annual CO2e emissions across >$1T in real estate assets. Other recent work includes establishing a large fund investing in critical clean technologies; leading one of the first climate stress tests of a major financial institution; and developing climate adaptation strategies for cities. Brodie also leads research and publishes extensively on these topics, and is an Adjunct Faculty at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.
Jennifer Kim – Fluor Corporation
Jennifer Kim is Vice President and Project Director for Fluor, leading engineering, procurement and construction efforts for multi-billion-dollar facilities around the globe.
She has more than 29 years of experience in project management, engineering, procurement, fabrication, construction and commissioning for a wide range of projects in both domestic and international locations, including the United States and Puerto Rico, Canada, the Middle East, China, India and Malaysia.
William Wooingsun Lee – SK hynix Semiconductor West Lafayette LLC
William Wooingsun Lee is CEO of SK hynix Semiconductor West Lafayette LLC. and has succeeded in developing products using TSV (Through silicon via) and WLP (Wafer level package), the original technologies of Microelectronics Packaging, and mass-producing them for the first time in the world 2013. Typically, High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) products have been successfully full automated mass-produced since 2020, and SK hynix has contributed to solidifying its No. 1 position in the HBM market.
Rafael Peralta – United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
Rafael Peralta has been the Director of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Regional Office for North America since July 2023. He served as Chief of Staff of UNEP from April 2021. Prior to joining UNEP, Rafael worked as a Senior Political Affairs Officer in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. He has over twenty years’ experience at the United Nations and beyond, working at the intersection of sustainable development, peace, and security in numerous countries and regions, including the Central African Republic and Haiti. His expertise includes international diplomacy, inter-agency UN coordination and environmental management. Rafael is a Spanish national.
David Ruggiero – Chair GLOBE
David Ruggiero is a Tenure Track Assistant Professor of Structural Design and Engineering at EPFL, Switzerland, where he leads the CONSTRUCT Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. in from the University of Toronto (Canada), and previously practiced as a structural engineer at RJC Toronto where he was a designer of high-rise buildings and other complex structures. Ruggiero aims to advance sustainable design through improved understanding of structural behaviour. He serves as Chair of the Joint Committee on the GLOBE Consensus (Global Consensus on Sustainability in the Built Environment), an international initiative to promote sustainability in the construction sector.
Welcoming addresses
Prof. Karen Plaut, Executive Vice President for Research at Purdue University
Dr. Karen Plaut became Executive Vice President for Research at Purdue University in January, 2023. Overseeing an expanding $2.8 billion research enterprise, Dr. Plaut is responsible for university-wide strategic initiatives and bringing together researchers and resources across traditional academic boundaries to drive interdisciplinary discoveries with societal impact.
She joined Purdue in 2010 as associate dean for research for the College of Agriculture and later became dean. A researcher at heart, Dr. Plaut has approximately 100 publications focused on mammary gland biology and has received funding from USDA, NIH, NSF, and NASA.
Prof. Arvind Raman, Dean of Purdue University’s College of Engineering
Arvind Raman is the John A. Edwardson Dean of Purdue University’s College of Engineering and the Robert V. Adams Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He is internationally known for his research on vibrations and nonlinear dynamics in nanotechnology, biomechanics and manufacturing. His work on the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) has helped the scientific and industrial community to better image and measure properties of complex materials. Simulation tools developed by Raman’s group on the nanohub have been used by thousands of researchers worldwide. He is the co-founder of the Shah Family Global Innovation Lab in the College of Engineering that supports technology development and translation of technologies for sustainable development.
Prof. Daniel Castro, Dean of Purdue Polytechnic Institute
Daniel Castro-Lacouture is Dean of the Purdue Polytechnic Institute at Purdue University since 2022 after 16 years at Georgia Institute of Technology. He received a BSc in Civil Engineering from Universidad de Los Andes, an MSc in Construction Management from The University of Reading, and a PhD from the School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University. He is a Registered Professional Engineer and worked in project engineering and management in the public and private sectors, Editor-in-Chief of Automation in Construction, serves in the Board of Directors of the International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction, Co-Chair of the 2022 International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction, and Chair of the 2014 ASCE Construction Research Congress.
Details on how to register are available here.
- WBC2025 update: April 2024
In 2025 Purdue University will host the 23rd World Building Congress WBC2025 at its campus in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA, from 19-23 May 2025. The CIB President Makarand (Mark) Hastak and his conference co-chair Z Torbica look forward to welcoming all CIB members and other delegates. The latest news is as follows. Headlines Host: Purdue… - WBC2025 update: October 2023
In 2025 Purdue University will host the 23rd World Building Congress #WBC2025 at its campus in West Lafayette, Indiana, USA, from 19-23 May 2025. The CIB President Makarand (Mark) Hastak and his conference co-chair Z Torbica look forward to welcoming all CIB members and other delegates. Planning is progressing well as this update shows. Headlines…